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Market Assessment 2013

Ninth Edition January 2013Edited by Robert Hucker

ISBN 978-1-84729-959-8

Contact Centres

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Contact Centres Foreword

© Key Note Ltd 2013

Contents

Executive Summary 1

1. Introduction 2

BACKGROUND..............................................................................................................................2

Methodology..................................................................................................................................2

DEFINITION....................................................................................................................................3

2. Strategic Overview 4

MARKET DYNAMICS...................................................................................................................4

Issues for Callers.............................................................................................................................4

Comprehension..............................................................................................................................4

Delays...............................................................................................................................................4

Complaint and Query Resolution...............................................................................................4

Fraud.................................................................................................................................................5

Spam and Unsolicited E-mails......................................................................................................6

Issues for Contact Centres............................................................................................................6

Infrastructure Failure and Crime.................................................................................................6

Technological Improvements and Investment.........................................................................7

Staff Skills........................................................................................................................................7

Award Winners: CCA Excellence Awards 2012........................................................................7

Market Size.....................................................................................................................................9

Table 2.1: The UK Call Centre Market by Total Turnover, Total Purchases of Goods,Materials and Services and Total Net Capital Expenditure by Value (£m),2008-2011........................................................................................................................................9

Figure 2.1: The UK Call Centre Market by Total Turnover, Total Purchases of Goods,Materials and Services and Total Net Capital Expenditure by Value (£m),2008-2011......................................................................................................................................10

Technology and Infrastructure..................................................................................................12

COMPETITIVE STRUCTURE......................................................................................................13

Industry Background...................................................................................................................13

Structure........................................................................................................................................14

Table 2.2: The Top 20 Contact Centre Companies in the UKby Turnover, Pre-tax Profit and Number of Staff (£000 and number), Year Ending2011/2012.......................................................................................................................................15

Contact Centres Contents


Figure 2.2: The Top 10 Contact Centre Companies in the UKby Turnover (£000), Year Ending 2011/2012..........................................................................16

CONSUMER TRENDS.................................................................................................................17

MARKET OUTLOOK..................................................................................................................18

3. Work In Call and Contact Centres 19

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................19

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES........................................................................................................19

Table 3.1: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK (000 and %), April to June 2001-2012...................................................................20

Figure 3.1: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK (000), April to June 2001-2012................................................................................21

Table 3.2: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK by Sector by Sex (000), April to June 2001-2012.................................................22

Figure 3.2: Employment in Call Centres in the UK by Sector by Sex (000), April to June2001-2012......................................................................................................................................24

Figure 3.3: Employment in Customer Care in the UK by Sector by Sex (000), Aprilto June 2001-2011........................................................................................................................25

Table 3.3: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK by Type of Contract by Sex (000 and %), April to June 2012...........................26

Figure 3.4: Employment in Call Centres in the UK by Typeof Contract by Sex (%), April to June 2011.............................................................................26

Figure 3.5: Employment in Customer Care in the UK by Typeof Contract by Sex (%), April to June 2011.............................................................................27

HOME WORKING — BENEFITS AND BARRIERS...............................................................27

STAFF TURNOVER IN CONTACT CENTRES.........................................................................28

SALARY.........................................................................................................................................30

Table 3.4: Typical Salaries Within Contact Centres in the UK by Regionby Type of Job (£), 2011..............................................................................................................31

TRAINING.....................................................................................................................................32

4. In-House and Outsourcers 34

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................34

OUTSOURCING...........................................................................................................................34

Table 4.1: Important Factors When Choosing an Outsourcer(% of client organisations), 2012..............................................................................................35

Figure 4.1: Top Ten Factors When Choosing an Outsourcer(% of client organisations), 2012..............................................................................................36

CUSTOMER SERVICE.................................................................................................................37

Table 4.2: The UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service (% score), 2012............38

Figure 4.2: The UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service (% score), 2012..........38



5. Marketing and Outbound Calls 39

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................39

OUTBOUND ACTIVITY..............................................................................................................39

Call Blending.................................................................................................................................40

A Multichannel Strategy.............................................................................................................40

LEGISLATION ..............................................................................................................................41

Ofcom.............................................................................................................................................41

Tackling Abandoned and Silent Calls......................................................................................41

Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.................................................43

6. Contact Centre Software and Technology Solutions 44

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................44

TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK...................................................................................44

HARDWARE COMPONENTS...................................................................................................45

CRM AND SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS......................................................................................46

Call Recording...............................................................................................................................46

Dynamic Scripting........................................................................................................................47

Interaction Analytics....................................................................................................................47

Self-Service....................................................................................................................................48

7. Promotion and Consulting 49

CUSTOMERS OPTING OUT......................................................................................................49

EXHIBITIONS................................................................................................................................50

RELATED TECHNOLOGY EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS.....................................................51

INDUSTRY INFORMATION AND CONSULTING SERVICES.............................................52

8. An International Perspective 53

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................53

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA..................................................................................53

Europe............................................................................................................................................53

Middle East....................................................................................................................................54

Africa..............................................................................................................................................55

ASIA/PACIFIC...............................................................................................................................55

The Philippines.............................................................................................................................56

Australia.........................................................................................................................................56

The PRC..........................................................................................................................................57



NORTH AMERICA.......................................................................................................................58

Canada...........................................................................................................................................58

The US............................................................................................................................................58

LATIN AMERICA.........................................................................................................................59

Brazil...............................................................................................................................................59

Mexico............................................................................................................................................60

9. PEST Analysis 61

POLITICAL.....................................................................................................................................61

Ofcom to Fine Silent Call Repeat Offenders Up To £2m......................................................61

Amendments Made to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive...............61

Citizens Advice Recommends Ban on PPI Cold Calling.........................................................62

ECONOMIC...................................................................................................................................63

General Economic Trends...........................................................................................................63

Table 9.1: UK Economic Trends (000, £m, %, million and £), 2007-2011..........................63

SOCIAL...........................................................................................................................................65

ICO Fines Spam Text Message Culprits Up To £500,000.......................................................65

Call Centres Found to Be Taking Advantage of Low-Paid Prison Workers......................66

TECHNOLOGICAL.......................................................................................................................67

Popularity of the Multichannel Contact Centre Continues to Grow.................................67

Table 9.2: Communications Channels Utilised by UK Contact Centres(% of respondents), 2012...........................................................................................................67

Figure 9.1: Communications Channels Utilised by UK Contact Centres(% of respondents), 2012...........................................................................................................68

Virtual Contact Centres...............................................................................................................69

Rollout of 4G and Superfast Broadband in the UK to Boost Internet ProtocolTelephony......................................................................................................................................70

10. Consumer Dynamics 71

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................71

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS..............................................................................................71

Table 10.1: Preferred Method Used to Contact an Organisation(% of respondents), November 2012.......................................................................................72

Telephone......................................................................................................................................73

Table 10.2: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Telephone (% of respondents), November 2012............................................73

E-mail and Website Click-Throughs..........................................................................................76

Table 10.3: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Prefer to DoSo by E-mail or by Clicking Through from Their Website (% of respondents), November 2012.......................................................................................76



Visiting a Main or Branch Office...............................................................................................79

Table 10.4: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto do so by Going into a Main or Branch Office...................................................................80

Letter or Fax..................................................................................................................................82

Table 10.5: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Letter or Fax (% of respondents), November 2012.........................................82

Instant Messenger/Social Media................................................................................................85

Table 10.6: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Instant Messenger/Social Media (% of respondents), November 2012.......................................................................................86

Demand for Flexible Communication Channels....................................................................88

Table 10.7: I Like to Be Able to Choose the Way I Contactan Organisation, According to the Circumstances (% of respondents), November 2012.......................................................................................89

PROBLEMS WITH AUTOMATED TELEPHONE SERVICES................................................91

Demand to Speak to Real Person Still High............................................................................91

Table 10.8: When I Telephone an Organisation I Would Rather Speak to a RealPerson Than to an Automated Answering Service (% of respondents), November2012................................................................................................................................................92

Table 10.9: When I Telephone an Organisation I Would Rather Speak to a RealPerson Than to an Automated Answering Service (% of respondents), 2002-2005,2007, 2009 and 2012....................................................................................................................95

Time Wasting................................................................................................................................96

Table 10.10: I Waste Time Waiting for Automated Telephone Answering Systemsto Connect Me to the Correct Personor Department (% of respondents), November 2012...........................................................97

Table 10.11: I Waste Time Waiting for Automated Telephone Answering Systemsto Connect Me to the Correct Personor Department (% of respondents), 2002-2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012..........................100

QUERIES AND COMPLAINTS HANDLING.........................................................................100

Queries ........................................................................................................................................100

Table 10.12: When I Telephone an Organisation With a Query,It Is Usually Answered to My Satisfaction (% of respondents), November 2012.........101

Complaints...................................................................................................................................103

Table 10.13: When I Telephone an Organisation Witha Complaint, It Is Usually Resolved to My Satisfaction (% of respondents), November 2012.....................................................................................104

THE SUCCESS OF TELESALES................................................................................................107

Table 10.14: Percentage of Respondents That Are Persuadedby Telesales Agents to Purchase Something or Are Made to Feel Under Pressure (% of respondents), November 2012...........................................108

Table 10.15: I Do Not Accept Telephone Calls From Salespersons Unless I HaveContacted Them Previously (% of respondents), November 2012..................................111



ISSUES WITH COMMUNICATION OVER THE PHONE...................................................113

Table 10.16: Penetration of Respondents that Understand Call Centre Staff HardlyEver, From Time to Time or Frequently (% of respondents), November 2012..............114

11. Competitor Analysis 117

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................117

OUTSOURCERS..........................................................................................................................117

Capita PLC....................................................................................................................................117

Table 11.1: Financial Results for Capita Business Services Ltd (£m), Years Ending31st December 2009-2011........................................................................................................118

CPM UK Ltd.................................................................................................................................118

Table 11.2: Financial Result for CPM UK Ltd (£m),Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011...............................................................................119

Geoban UK Ltd...........................................................................................................................119

Table 11.3: Financial Results for Geoban UK Ltd (£m and £000), Years Ending31st December 2009-2011........................................................................................................120

The Innovation Group PLC.......................................................................................................120

Table 11.4: Financial Results for The Innovation Group PLC (£m), Years Ending30th September 2009-2011......................................................................................................121

Serco Group PLC.........................................................................................................................121

Table 11.5: Financial Results for Serco Listening Company Ltd (£m), Years Ending31st October 2009-2010 and 61 Weeks Ending 31st December 2011.............................122

Vertex Data Science Ltd............................................................................................................123

Table 11.6: Financial Results for Vertex Data Science Ltd(£m), Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012............................................................................124

SOFTWARE AND INFRASTRUCTURE SUPPLIERS ...........................................................124

Aspect Software Ltd..................................................................................................................124

Table 11.7: Financial Results for Aspect Software UK Ltd(£000), Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011..................................................................125

Avaya UK Ltd..............................................................................................................................125

Table 11.8: Financial Results for Avaya UK Ltd (£m),Years Ending 30th September 2009-2011.............................................................................126

BT...................................................................................................................................................126

Table 11.9: Financial Results for BT Global Services (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2009-2011......................................................................................127

Cisco .............................................................................................................................................127

IBM Global Process Services.....................................................................................................127

Mitel Networks Ltd....................................................................................................................128

Table 11.10: Financial Results for Mitel Networks Ltd (£000), Years Ending30th April 2009-2011.................................................................................................................129



ONI PLC........................................................................................................................................129

Table 11.11: Financial Results for ONI PLC (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012......................................................................................130

Qas Ltd.........................................................................................................................................130

Table 11.12: Financial Results for Qas Ltd (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012......................................................................................131

Salesforce.....................................................................................................................................131

Table 11.13: Financial Results for Salesforce.com Inc($m), Years Ending 31st January 2010-2012.........................................................................132

12. The Future 133

THE RISE OF ‘NORTHSHORING’...........................................................................................133

NEW CONTACT CENTRE MODELS TO BE TESTED.........................................................134

The ‘Virtual’ Model....................................................................................................................134

The Social Business.....................................................................................................................135

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MULTICHANNEL.....................................................................135

GROWTH IN STAFF RECRUITMENT FORECAST UP TO 2015......................................136

13. Further Sources 138

Associations...............................................................................................................................138

Publications...............................................................................................................................138

General Sources.......................................................................................................................140

Government Publications ....................................................................................................141

Other Sources...........................................................................................................................141

Key Note Sources ....................................................................................................................144

Understanding Consumer Survey Data 146

Number, Profile, Penetration..............................................................................................146

Social Grade...............................................................................................................................147

Standard Region......................................................................................................................147

Key Note Research 148

The Key Note Range of Reports 149



Executive Summary

The ongoing economic instability currently being experienced across the UKresulted in a small decline of 1.2% in the number of people employed in callcentres and customer care in 2011; however, this followed a rise of 8.2% in2010. Despite the decline observed in 2011, along with continued concerns thathave plagued the economy in recent years, the contact centres market in theUK has continued to remain relatively robust, with total turnover estimated tohave grown by 5.4% between 2010 and 2011. On top of this, over the past fewyears a number of companies have opted to transfer their contact centreoperations back into the UK, following an initial trend to outsource to overseasfirms observed during the early 2000s. Recruitment has been high in the Northof the country, with many companies attracted by the low property rentalprices and cheaper wage costs available within northern counties. This trend,termed ‘Northshoring’, is set to continue over the next few years, as morecompanies look to move their contact centres back to the UK following anincreasing number of consumer complaints regarding miscommunicationwhen talking to overseas call agents.

Another significant trend that has had a noticeable impact on the contactcentres market in recent years is the move towards the ‘multichannel’, withmany firms seeking to diversify and expand their operations by increasing thenumber of communications channels through which customers can contactthem, with particular emphasis on e-mail, web chat, instant messenger (IM),short messaging service (SMS) and social media contexts. The popularity of themultichannel strategy has also led to a significant proportion of firms investingin upgrading their networking capabilities through the implementation ofInternet Protocol (IP) telephony, allowing businesses to transmit voice and dataover a single network in one place, also providing telephony services over theInternet free of charge or on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Other solutions, such as cloud-based services and self-service, have alsocontinued to be explored by contact centre businesses in recent years, ascompanies seek to provide more efficient customer service solutions and lookto keep costs low in the face of continued economic instability. However, theseparticular solutions have been slow to take off, as has the use of social mediaas a communications channel among contact centre operations, with manycompanies preferring the ‘watch and wait’ option in order to assess how bestto invest and upgrade their business.

Growth is predicted by Key Note for the future of the contact centres industry.While this growth is likely to be driven by the ongoing trend towardsnorthshoring and the continued dominance of the services sector within theUK, public-sector spending cuts are expected to continue as the Governmentcontinues to reduce the budget deficit. The continued economic difficulties inthe country are also likely to limit growth. This could have significantrepercussions for those working within the public sector.

Contact Centres Executive Summary

© Key Note Ltd 2013 1

1. Introduction

BACKGROUND

This Key Note Market Assessment revisits the contact centres market in the UK,following the publication of the previous edition of this report in 2010. Thereport analyses the current market size in terms of volume, along with recentand relevant market trends and consumer attitudes towards contact centres.This Market Assessment also provides up-to-date financial information on theleading companies in the market.

In recent years, the expansion of communications channels such as e-mail,social networking sites and other social media and mobile telephones hasresulted in the majority of contact centres implementing multi-channelstrategies, in order to reach the widest consumer base possible.

Methodology

In November 2012, Key Note commissioned NEMS Market Research toundertake an exclusive consumer survey in order to assess consumer attitudesand opinions regarding contact centres. NEMS carried out similar surveys forKey Note pertaining to the contact centre market for previous editions of thisreport, in 2005, 2007 and 2010. BMRB Access was the survey provider in 2003and 2004, while NOP carried out research on behalf of Key Note in 2000 and2002. Despite some of these surveys using different parameters, much of theresearch is still comparable. The most recent survey commissioned by Key Noteto be included in this report was undertaken in November 2012 and questioned1,000 men and women in Great Britain, all aged 16 and above. The results ofthe survey can be found in Chapter 10 — Consumer Dynamics.

The report also assesses the size of the market in terms of volume, i.e. thenumber of contact centres operating in the UK and the number of peopleemployed by the industry. However, it should be noted that due to thedispersed and fragmented nature of the industry, assessing the exact size ofthe market along these lines can often be problematic, with many companiesoutsourcing to overseas call centres on a permanent basis or at peak times andout-of-hours periods. Analysing the market in terms of employee numbers canalso prove difficult, as some centres with just a few employees may form partof a much larger nationwide network of operations. The high staff turnoverin the market can also be problematic in identifying the total number of peopleemployed within the industry at any one time.

Contact Centres Introduction


DEFINITION

Contact centres can be defined as a central point within a company or anoutsourced division which primarily deals with all customer contactresponsibilities, including contact received via e-mail, short message service(SMS), web chat, faxing, visiting websites, telephone calls and instantmessaging (IM). These responsibilities often form a major part of a company’scustomer relationship management (CRM) strategy. They differ slightly fromcall centres, which are primarily involved in either answering or transmitting alarge volume of calls to customers. Nowadays, however, the terms ‘call centre’and ‘contact centre’ have become almost interchangeable and are usually usedto refer to the same type of operation, with most organisations currentlyutilising a variety of different communications channels and very rarelyfocusing solely on telephony operations.

Contact centres are often multi-faceted in their approach to communications,with most relying on a variety of different communications channels throughwhich they can contact customers or receive inbound queries. These channelscan include e-mail, landline and mobile telephones, click-throughs fromwebsites, interactive television, instant messaging (IM), surface mail and socialnetworking sites, such as Twitter. The utilisation of a multi-channelled contactapproach allows businesses to collate relevant contact information and dataon customers, which are usually registered in a master database — this isparticularly useful to marketers as the compilation of such information oftenallows them to better target prospective clients and/or consumers.

A variety of software solutions and various technologies are used by contactcentres in order to effectively manage the large call volumes and data receivedby such organisations. For example, in recent years, many contact centres haveupgraded to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system, which can reduceoperating costs and allows businesses to communicate with customers in realtime across the globe.

Contact Centres Introduction


2. Strategic Overview

MARKET DYNAMICS

Issues for Callers

Comprehension

A large number of UK contact centres have moved some of their centreoperations to overseas locations, such as India or Egypt, resulting inmiscommunication between British callers and Indian call centre operativeswith strong accents. According to Key Note’s latest consumer survey, 38.4%only understood what call centre staff said on the telephone from time to time;while 26% revealed that they hardly ever understood call agents. Althoughoffshoring contact centre operations can often be less expensive than runninga centre in the UK, some companies have chosen to stay in the UK in order tobetter accommodate domestic customers’ requirements.

Delays

High call volumes within call centres can often lead to lengthy delays forcustomers, with many being put on hold for long periods of time or being heldup by complicated option menus. For example, the results from Key Note’s 2012consumer survey revealed that more than four-fifths (85.6%) of customersagreed that they wasted time waiting for automated telephone answeringmachines to connect them to the correct person or department.

Complaint and Query Resolution

Poor query outcomes and a lack of a suitable complaints procedure cansometimes affect consumers. However, according to Key Note’s most recentconsumer survey, nearly four out of every five individuals (78.2%) felt thatwhen they telephoned an organisation with a query, it was usually answeredto their satisfaction. A slightly lower proportion of respondents felt the samewhen they telephoned in with a complaint, with 71.3% agreeing that theircomplaints were usually resolved correctly. This is an improvement on theresults of the previous survey commissioned by Key Note, undertaken in 2010,when 75.7% of those questioned agreed that queries were handled in asatisfactory way; only 67.9% agreed that this was the case for complaints.These results suggest that contact centres have become more adept at handlingboth queries and complaints over the past 2 years, highlighting the increasingimportance that providing a good customer service has within the industry.

Contact Centres Strategic Overview


Fraud

E-mail and text message fraud has become a growing problem in the UK inrecent years and has continued to have a negative effect on public confidencein online communications. Scam e-mails and text messages — such as thosepurporting to be from banks, building societies and other corporate services— as well as mass marketing e-mail fraud, reportedly affected around 3,000people in the UK in 2010, with the average victim reporting a fraud that costthem around £27,000, according to an article published by the BBC in February2011. Public concern regarding e-mail fraud and other electronic forms of fraudhas continued to damage consumer confidence in using online services andtransactional websites. As a result, many people have been deterred from usingsuch services due to worries over identity theft or credit/debit card fraud.

Following the rising level of e-mail and text message fraud observed in the UKover the past few years, the National Fraud Authority (NFA) launched a newoperation called Action Fraud in 2009 in order to deal with complaintsregarding fraud and to track down the criminals responsible for it.

Contact centres dealing with confidential information, including credit/debitcard details, are expected to comply with the Payment Card Industry DataSecurity Standard (PCI DSS), which was drawn up by the PCI Security StandardsCouncil. PCI DSS aims to decrease payment card fraud across the Internet andincrease credit card data security by ensuring that all organisations that store,transmit or process cardholder data comply with the standards. Theseregulations specify that all applicable organisations build and maintain asecure information technology (IT) network; protect cardholder data; maintaina vulnerability management program; implement strong access controlmeasures; regularly monitor and test networks; and maintain an informationsecurity policy. However, despite the implementation of these standards in theUK, there have been a number of cases involving data leakages from contactcentre staff. For example, in August 2011, an undercover report by The Sunnewspaper revealed that thousands of Britons’ bank and credit card detailsheld by Indian call centres, including those belonging to customers fromBarclays and Lloyds TSB, were being sold to criminals.

According to a recent study undertaken by Davies Hickman Partners on behalfof Syntec Telecom in September 2012, around 68% of people in the UK believethat more should be done within organisations in order to reduce thelikelihood of customers being affected by credit and debit card fraud. On topof this, 80% of respondents revealed that they thought some agents in callcentres may be able to use personal information or financial details providedto them by callers; while only 14% said that they felt confident that companiesthey buy from comply with adequate security standards in order to keepconfidential information private.



Spam and Unsolicited E-mails

Spam and unsolicited e-mails, text messages or even direct messages via socialnetworking sites, such as Twitter, have also become an increasing problem inrecent years, with many people receiving a barrage of mass marketing spammail. Problems regarding mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI) havedominated headlines over the past couple of years, following a court ruling in2011 which stipulated that all UK banks must pay compensation to customerswho had been mis-sold PPI. However, this has led to an increasing number oftelemarketing and telesales contact centres sending out huge numbers of spame-mails and text messages, along with cold calls, in order to obtain clients forlawyer or solicitor firms working on a ‘no win no fee’ basis against the banksinvolved. In recent months, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) hasbegun to crackdown on spam PPI messages, after fining two people found tobe responsible for sending out millions of spam texts offering accidentcompensation and PPI mis-selling services, with a further eight companiesthought to be facing similar charges.

Issues for Contact Centres

Infrastructure Failure and Crime

IT system failures, power outages and other infrastructure problems can oftenaffect contact centres, causing huge delays for callers trying to get through tocustomer services. For example, in August 2011, the installation of a new£160m electronic customer care system designed to improve service standardsat energy company EDF resulted in massive delays for customers attempting toget through to the firm’s call centres, with many people waiting hours toobtain a response to bill queries.

Poor working conditions at call centres both in the UK and abroad have alsoaffected the public image of the industry in recent years. According to a surveyundertaken by the public service trade union Unison in June 2012, almost aquarter of UK call centre workers were found to have their toilet breaksrestricted, while seven out of ten complained of eye strain and 80% revealedthat their work caused them to feel stressed. However, conditions at offshorecontact centres are often considered to be worse, with many workers paid lowwages and expected to work long shifts with only short breaks, in order to cutdown on overheads and maximise business. According to Shehzad Nadeem,author of Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing is Changing the Way IndiansUnderstand Themselves, published in 2011, the increased productivityobserved at Indian contact centres — which has risen by around 15% to 25%in recent years — is ‘less to do with age, motivation, or cultural inheritancethan with an accelerated work pace and technologically induced efficiency’.Furthermore, despite efforts within Indian contact centres to improve breakareas and other facilities, breaks are strictly monitored and employees aresubjected to intrusive surveillance by line managers. On top of this, Nadeemreveals that many Indian call centre employees ‘are often expected to work6 days a week and forego national holidays, and they often complain of unpaidmandatory overtime’.



Call centres can also be subject to high levels of crime, with some reportingdata leakages from some workers or even being the subject of organised crimegangs. For example, in 2010, it was revealed that a worker in a call centre inKirkby, Liverpool, that is used by Halifax and the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) stolemore than £250,000 from bank customers in a joint conspiracy with her partnerwhen she accessed personal details of customers to steal their money. Othershave even been the target of organised crime gangs who have placed peoplewithin call centres in order to steal customers’ data.

Technological Improvements and Investment

The development and upgrading of contact centres can sometimes provedifficult for organisations, particularly during times of economic downturnwhen companies often seek to cut budgets and overhead costs in order toremain profitable. However, upgrades to systems can be necessary in order toremain appealing to clients and achieve good customer satisfaction. This isparticularly true for large contact centres, which need to deal with a high levelof inbound queries in a timely manner.

Staff Skills

Although no specialised qualifications are needed to gain employment at a callcentre, customer service skills are highly valued. The majority of a contactcentre’s workforce is represented by front line staff, but there is also a demandfor managers and quality assurance employees. Most of the training providedto staff is employer-funded and focuses on customer service, althoughspecialist training is also given dependent on the sector in which the call centreis positioned, e.g. finance, technology, public services, etc. However, accordingto the Contact Centre Operations: Labour Market Report 2012 published bySkills CFA, although customer service training within contact centres isgenerally more extensive than in traditional high-street stores, some supplyshortfall was cited in areas such as resource planning, project management andother higher order skills.

Award Winners: CCA Excellence Awards 2012

The Customer Contact Association (CCA) holds an annual awards ceremony tocelebrate the highest achieving professionals from all sectors of the contactcentres industry. The CCA Excellence Awards are often seen as a globalstandard within the market and are judged by peers working within theindustry. The 2012 awards ceremony was led by Barclays Wealth andInvestment Management, which won a total of five awards, including OverallProfessional of the Year and Overall Team of the Year. However, the Driverand Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) Contact Centre stole the show aftertaking home the gong for Overall Centre of the Year and Most EffectiveTraining Programme.



Further details regarding the winners of the 2012 CCA Excellence Awards arelisted below:

• Best Customer Experience Centre of the Year — Barclays Wealth andInvestment Management (Winner); LV= (Highly Commended)

• Contact Centres: Great Places to Work — LV= (Winner); EverythingEverywhere (Highly Commended)

• Most Effective Training Programme — DVLA Contact Centre (Winner);Capita BBC Audience Services (Highly Commended)

• Corporate Social Responsibility in Customer Contact — NationwideBuilding Society (Winner); Bank of America (Highly Commended)

• Professional of the Year: Agent — Stacey Gowran, T-Mobile (Winner);Nick Kkafas, Serco (Highly Commended)

• Professional of the Year: Team Leader — Amanda Cradden, BarclaysWealth and Investment Management (Winner); Sarah Mottram, Sky (HighlyCommended)

• Professional of the Year: Manager — Isobel McKendry, Telefónica UK Ltd(Winner); Alexis Ward, Barclays Wealth and Investment Management (HighlyCommended)

• Professional of the Year: Director — Peter Sinden, LV=

• Lifetime Achievement Award — Cheryl Black

• Contact Centre Team of the Year: Business-to-Business (B2B) —Demand Management Team, HMRC (Winner); Capita/O2 B2B Team (HighlyCommended)

• Contact Centre Team of the Year: Business-to-Customer (B2C) —Global Client Service Centres, Barclays Wealth and Investment Management(Winner); Digital UK, MGt PLC (Highly Commended)

• Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year — CPM UK Ltd (Winner);Sky (Highly Commended)

• Back Office Customer Service Team of the Year — Analysis and IncentiveTeam, Sky (Winner); Sales and Quality Team, Sky (Highly Commended)

• Best Outsourcing Partnership — City Park Technologies and AmericanExpress (Winner); RESPONSE and Hiscox UK & Ireland (Highly Commended)

• Best Technology Partnership — NewVoiceMedia and SHL

• Most Effective Use of Self Service — National Health Service (NHS)Business Services Authority

• Most Effective Use of Social Media — Tesco

• Overall Professional of the Year — Amanda Cradden, Barclays Wealthand Investment Management



• Overall Team of the Year — Global Client Service Centre, Barclays Wealthand Investment Management

• Overall Centre of the Year — DVLA Contact Centre.

Market Size

Data compiled by the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS’) Annual BusinessSurvey (ABS) give a general picture of the current status of the contact centresindustry and provide figures for combined turnover; total purchases of goods,material and services; and net capital expenditure, as displayed in Table 2.1.According to the figures, the combined turnover of companies located in theUK operating as call centres increased by 11.6% between 2008 and 2011, from£1.99bn to £2.22bn, despite observing a decline of 4.5% in 2009.Unsurprisingly, these fluctuations had a direct effect on total purchases ofgoods, material and services, as well as total net capital expenditure within theindustry during the 4-year period, both of which are good indicators regardingthe growth and investment within a particular industry. Total purchases ofgoods, materials and services fell by 8% in 2009, before rising to £682m in 2011.Total net capital expenditure continued to decline in both 2009 and 2010,before recovering in 2011 and rising by 183.3% to £51m. These fluctuationsare primarily down to the ongoing economic difficulties currently beingexperienced in the UK, following the double-dip recession of early 2012 andthe ongoing debt crisis within the Eurozone.

Table 2.1: The UK Call Centre Market by Total Turnover, TotalPurchases of Goods, Materials and Services and Total Net

Capital Expenditure by Value (£m), 2008-2011

2008 2009 2010 2011

Total turnover 1,985 1,895 2,101 2,215

% change year-on-year - -4.5 10.9 5.4

Total purchases of goods, materialsand services 601 553 633 682

% change year-on-year - -8.0 14.5 7.7

Table continues...



Table 2.1: The UK Call Centre Market by Total Turnover, TotalPurchases of Goods, Materials and Services and Total Net


...table continued

2008 2009 2010 2011

Total net capital expenditure 53 41 18 51

% change year-on-year - -22.6 -56.1 183.3

Note: these figures may not be representative of the entire contact and call centresmarket in the UK as it includes mainly out-of-house businesses whose principal activityincludes call centre activities, thus excluding in-house operations that form part of a widerfirm, e.g. a bank; the Annual Business Survey (ABS) samples approximately 62,000businesses in Great Britain from a population of over 1.8 million businesses in the sampleframe.

Source: Annual Business Survey, 2011, National Statistics © Crown copyrightmaterial is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO (and theQueen’s Printer for Scotland)

Figure 2.1: The UK Call Centre Market by Total Turnover, TotalPurchases of Goods, Materials and Services and Total Net


Turnover

Purchases of goods, etc.

Net capital expenditure

2008 2009 2010 20110

250

500

750

1,000

1,250

1,500

1,750

2,000

2,250

2,500

Note: see notes for Table 2.1.

Source: Annual Business Survey, 2011, National Statistics © Crown copyrightmaterial is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO (and theQueen’s Printer for Scotland)/Key Note



Further figures compiled by ONS in the second quarter (Q2) of 2011 estimatedthat 107,000 people were working in call and contact centre operations, up by7% from 100,000 in Q2 2010. However, it should be noted that this data iscollected largely via neighbourhood surveys which ask respondents what themain business of their employer is. It could therefore be assumed that the dataonly refers to employees of companies that operate outsourced contact centreson behalf of other organisations and may thus exclude in-house call andcontact centre operations. However, as the majority of the market isrepresented by in-house operations, it is thought that a much greater numberof people are employed in contact centres, at just over 1 million.

According to Skills CFA’s Contact Centre Operations: Labour Market Report,2012, the average contact centre in the UK includes 115 seats, while operationsinvolved in outsourcing, utilities, communications and finance have a largerthan average mean number of seats. The report also revealed that there wereapproximately 4,200 contact centres based in the UK that employed 100 agentsor fewer, representing 75% of the market but employing just 27% of allagents. Meanwhile, larger contact centres with over 250 seats employedaround 51% of all contact centre operatives.

The growth that has been observed in contact centre employment over thepast decade or so has been driven by the increasingly service-led economy inthe UK — with over 70% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 80% of UK jobscurrently thought to be service-based. Improvements in technology forbusinesses and business development have also helped to drive investmentwithin this particular sector, as has a growing number of firms opting to bringsuch operations in-house in order to more effectively maintain budgets. Anumber of firms have also chosen to relocate their overseas operations backinto the UK, following a rise in customer complaints regardingmiscommunication between overseas operatives. For example, in July 2011,Santander revealed that it had brought its call centres back to the UK fromIndia following customer complaints. In the same month, telecommunicationsfirm New Call Telecom transferred one its call centres from India to Lancashirefollowing increased operating prices in India.

By vertical sector, retail leads the contact centre market, followed by financeand the public sector, while retail and communications were the mostsignificant in terms of employment. In terms of region, more northerly areassuch as the North East, the North West, Scotland, and Yorkshire andHumberside are particularly important within the market, with manycompanies setting up contact centre operations in these particular regions dueto the lower wages and costs of operating within such areas, particularlycompared with Greater London and the South East.



The UK market is dominated by in-house call centres, although outsourcingoperations to specialist contact centre businesses is a growing trend, which hasdriven demand for business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, such asCapita Group, and involves contracting out specific parts of a business to athird-party service provider. As a result, companies’ contact centre operationsare often small and fragmented, with many having different offices in a varietyof locations, including overseas divisions. However, this has allowed thesecompanies to offer round-the-clock customer service — something that hasproved particularly useful to companies with an international client base —and also allows firms to offer a variety of different services.

Technology and Infrastructure

Investment in new technology, particularly in technology intended to unifycommunications within contact centres and call centres, is key to ensuring thata business remains ahead of the market and can help to save money onnetwork and telephony costs. In recent years, many companies have introducedVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems within their contact centreoperations, which allow companies to transmit voice and data over a singlenetwork in one place, thus making calls over the network for free. Skype is oneof the leading providers of VoIP and provides telephony services over theInternet free of charge. According to a study undertaken by VoIP expertsTelappliant in June 2012, the technology is currently being used by around 40%of UK businesses, while a further 25% are thought to be planning to reviewand implement VoIP within the next 12 months.

The use of an Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure has also allowed companiesto operate virtual contact centres and has helped to facilitate home-working.Virtual contact centres represent one of the fastest-growing trends within thecontact centre market and can often prove a cost-effective solution in allowingstaff to operate from home, thus reducing office and property costs. A numberof companies now use virtual contact centres, such as the Co-operative TravelGroup’s Future Travel division — the UK’s largest virtual contact centre.

Cloud-based solutions have also become increasingly popular amongorganisations looking to save costs as these types of data storage models freeup investment that would have been channelled into in-house storage systemsand IT resources — otherwise known as customer premise equipment (CPE).Cloud-based solutions can also provide greater flexibility and huge scalabilityto companies — particularly those that operate virtual contact centres — andallow for improved integration between front and back office staff, as well asa utilities approach to billing, i.e. pay-as-you-go services. The rising popularityof cloud-based solutions has also driven the development of cloud-basedcustomer relationship management (CRM) tools by software suppliers to theservices-based sector in recent years.



Another solution that has continued to take hold in recent years is telephonyself-service, which allows contact centre operations to deal with high callvolumes efficiently and can save costs. However, the majority of businesses optto use a mixture of self-service and contact centre agent operatives, with only4% of the total contact centre industry accounted for by telephony self-service,while 79% utilise agent telephony, according to The 2012 MultichannelSurvey, which was undertaken by Genesys and Protocall One. Nevertheless, thisparticular area of the market has been growing following the integration ofnew and different contact channels such as social media and the provision oftroubleshooting query searches via the Internet.

COMPETITIVE STRUCTURE

Industry Background

The first call centres were set up following the development of automatic calldistributor (ACD) systems, which are thought to have first been manufacturedduring the 1950s. These systems helped to filter and assign calls to agents usingan algorithm and were first used by central operator enquiries in the UK.According to callcentrehelper.com, the earliest example of a call centre in theUK was the Birmingham Press and Mail centre in 1965. Over the next coupleof decades, during the 1970s and 1980s, a number of major companiesestablished their own call centre operations, such as Barclaycard and LloydsTSB. In 1985, insurance firm Direct Line became the first company to sellinsurance entirely over the telephone.

In the 1980s, the deregulation of the telecommunications market, along withtechnological advances in ACD systems and infrastructure, led to a fall in servicecosts and, as a result, the UK contact centre industry grew to become the largestin the world, with the exception of that in the US. The rise of the Internetduring the 1990s continued to stimulate growth with the contact centremarket, with dotcom companies continuing to attract large sums of investmentduring this decade and websites helping many companies to expand theircommunications services via different channels.

In the early 2000s, a number of companies opted to move their call centreoperations to overseas locations such as India and the Philippines, where costsand wages are generally cheaper. As mentioned previously, in recent yearsmany firms have begun to move operations back to the UK following a rise incustomer complaints. Nowadays, the majority of contact centres utilise amulti-channel strategy, with many using various methods of communication,including e-mail, text messages, the Internet and social media, alongsidetraditional telephony services. This has been facilitated by the development ofcloud-based technology and improvements in CRM solutions, which havehelped to integrate the use of multiple channels and international operations.



Structure

The market is dominated by in-house contact centres, which representapproximately 65% of the industry, with the remaining 35% accounted for byoutsourcing firms, such as Capita Group which holds a number of Governmentcontracts to service the public sector. In recent years, however, specialistoutsourcing firms have continued to gain market share and can often providea more cost-effective solution to companies looking to set up a new contactcentre operation.

In-house departments often focus primarily on customer service oradministrative functions and companies can work across a broad range ofindustries, such as telecommunications, finance, retail and sales,telemarketing, communications, the public sector, utilities, printing andpublishing, manufacturing, transport and travel, and other service-basedindustries. Contact centres based in-house usually deal with inbound queries;however, there are also a number of businesses that deal only with outboundcalls. These types of companies are usually involved in telemarketing ortelesales.

Table 2.2 displays the top 20 contact centre companies that are currentlyoperating within the UK in terms of turnover during 2011/2012. Thesecompanies are primarily engaged in providing outsourced contact centresolutions to businesses. Capita Business Services Ltd, which holds a number oflucrative public-sector contracts, led the market in terms of turnover, aftergenerating revenue of £885.1m. It also recorded the highest number ofemployees, at 10,071 in the year ending 31st December 2011. In second placewas Vertex Data Science Ltd, which serves a number of well-known brandsincluding Hydro One and Southstar Energy and registered a turnover of£340.4m and a pre-tax profit of £16.2m in 2012; this company was followed byBPO specialist The Innovation Group PLC, which generated sales of £175.9mand reported a pre-tax profit of £10.2m in 2011.

Despite being included in the top 20, a number of firms registered a pre-taxloss during 2011/2012, including Serco Listening Co Ltd, Teleperformance Ltd,HCL BPO Services (NI) Ltd, Clinical Solutions International Ltd, MGt PLC andSpoke (Interactive) Ltd, suggesting that some companies are still struggling toturn a profit following the ongoing economic instability within the UK and theEurozone.



Table 2.2: The Top 20 Contact Centre Companies in the UKby Turnover, Pre-tax Profit and Number of Staff

(£000 and number), Year Ending 2011/2012

Turn

over (£

000

)

Pre

-Tax

Pro

fit (£0

00

)

Nu

mb

er o

fSta

ff

Finan

cial

Year E

nd

ing

Rank Company

1 Capita Business ServicesLtd 885,084 215,107 10,071 31/12/2011

2 Vertex Data Science Ltd 340,449 16,215 7,083 31/03/2012

3 The Innovation Group PLC 175,868 10,207 2,355 30/09/2011

4 Geoban UK Ltd 133,337 79 3,157 31/12/2011

5 CPM UK Ltd 100,761 7,053 898 31/12/2011

6 Serco Listening Co. Ltd 87,323 -9,513 3,589 31/12/2011

7 Teleperformance Ltd 70,056 -731 2,958 31/12/2011

8 Telecom Service CentresLtd 62,377 4,178 2,908 31/03/2011

9 Inkfish Call Centres Ltd 33,877 564 1,617 31/03/2012

10 Response (BuildingRewarding Relationships)Ltd 31,913 28 1,627 30/06/2011

11 Infoteam InternationalServices Ltd 28,397 4,076 486 30/04/2011

12 Hinduja Global SolutionsUK Ltd 24,982 1,990 896 31/03/2012

13 HCL BPO Services (NI) Ltd 22,225 -1,757 1,317 30/06/2011

14 Clinical SolutionsInternational Ltd 22,172 -136 115 31/12/2011

15 Yes Money Ltd 19,476 150 413 31/10/2011

16 Teletech UK Ltd 17,723 1,540 923 31/12/2011

Table continues...



Table 2.2: The Top 20 Contact Centre Companies in the UKby Turnover, Pre-tax Profit and Number of Staff

(£000 and number), Year Ending 2011/2012

...table continued

Turn

over (£

000

)

Pre

-Tax

Pro

fit (£0

00

)

Nu

mb

er o

fSta

ff

Finan

cial

Year E

nd

ing

17 MGT PLC 15,358 -3,268 752 31/12/2011

18 Spoke (Interactive) Ltd 15,247 -575 52 30/06/2011

19 Egain CommunicationsLtd 14,732 3,482 57 30/06/2011

20 Clientlogic Ltd 14,219 241 603 31/12/2011

Source: Key Note

Figure 2.2: The Top 10 Contact Centre Companies in the UKby Turnover (£000), Year Ending 2011/2012

Capita Business Services Ltd

Vertex Data Science Ltd

The Innovation Group PLC

Geoban U

K LtdCPM

UK Ltd

Serco Listening Co LtdTeleperform

ance LtdTelecom

Service Centres Ltd

Inkfish Call Centres Ltd

Response Ltd

0

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

700,000

800,000

900,000

1,000,000

Source: Key Note



CONSUMER TRENDS

In November 2012, Key Note commissioned NEMS Market Research toundertake an exclusive consumer survey in order to investigate attitudes andopinions pertaining to contact centres. Respondents were asked a series ofstatements in relation to contact centres, with which they had to agree ordisagree. The survey was undertaken using a sample of 1,000 men and womenall aged 16 and above.

According to the survey results, the majority of respondents still preferred tocontact an organisation via traditional means — using the telephone — with71.6% of people opting for this method. However, more than half (57.6%)revealed that they used e-mail or click-through options on an organisation’swebsite in order to contact customer services. This compares with the 43.9%that preferred to contact a particular company in person by visiting a main orlocal branch and the 27.5% who opted to communicate via letter or fax. Newcommunication channels, such as instant messenger (IM) and social media, stillhave a relatively low penetration rate, with only 15.1% of respondents usingthis particular method in order to contact customer services.

Self-service telephone options were found to be relatively unpopular withconsumers, despite a number of companies installing self-service capabilities,with 94.3% of respondents revealing that they would rather speak to a realperson than an automated answering service. On top of this, 85.6% of peoplefelt that they wasted time waiting for automated telephone answering servicesto connect them to the correct person or department.

Despite this, the majority of those questioned agreed that their queries orcomplaints were usually answered by contact centre customer services to theirsatisfaction. Nearly four-fifths (78.2%) stated that they felt their queries wereusually answered satisfactorily, while around 7 in 10 respondents (71.3%)agreed that, when phoning in with a complaint, it was handled sufficientlywell.

Telemarketing/telesales calls were found to be slightly successful, with nearlya third (30.5%) of respondents revealing that salespeople that phoned themfrequently persuaded them to buy something or made them feel underpressure to buy. In comparison, 13.5% stated that sales calls persuaded themto purchase items/made them feel under pressure to do so from time to time.Nearly half (46.6%) said that salespeople that phoned them hardly everpersuaded them to buy something or made them feel under pressure. Inaddition, nearly three quarters (74.7%) of those questioned revealed that theydo not accept calls from salespeople unless they had contacted thempreviously.

The survey results also highlighted some problems concerning the standard ofcommunication achieved between customers and call centre agents, witharound one in four people (26%) revealing that they hardly ever understoodwhat call centre staff were saying, while 38.4% stated that they understoodsuch calls from time to time. Around a third (34.4%) of respondents said thatthey had no trouble understanding contact centre staff and that theyfrequently understood what was being said to them.



MARKET OUTLOOK

The contact centres market in the UK is expected to continue to grow,following continued transference of overseas operations back to domesticlocations in a bid to appeal further to customers wishing to talk to UK-basedoperatives and in response to growing customer complaints regardingmiscommunications when talking to staff based abroad. Investment intoupgrading technology and IT infrastructure within UK call centres is alsopredicted to continue to rise in the near future following the increasingpopularity of multi-channel communications strategies that take into accounta variety of mediums, such as e-mail, text messages, social media, IM and, ofcourse, telephony services. For example, figures compiled by Genesys andProtocall One for The 2012 Multichannel Survey — that was published in May2012 and questioned 218 respondents from the contact centres market —revealed that although voice telephony is still the most widespread (70%),non-voice channels such as Web enquiry forms (21%) and Web chat (12%) werecontinuing to increase in terms of penetration, while social media has becomean important secondary channel, with 9% of businesses agreeing that this wasthe case.

This trend towards a more multi-channel contact centre is in turn expected todrive demand for unified communications (UC) software, which integratesreal-time communications services, such as IM and telephone calls, withnon-real-time communications, such as voicemail, e-mail or text messaging;thus providing contact centre agents with a single user interface from whichthey can interact with customers using a variety of communication channels.Other solutions, such as cloud-based storage services — which allow phone callsand IM services to be delivered over the Internet for free or at a monthly fee— and self-service contact centre response menus are also likely to featureheavily in the future, as are virtual contact centres, which provide greaterflexibility and allow businesses to operate round-the-clock services using homeoperatives.

Although the contact centres market has observed small declines (in terms ofemployee numbers) over the past couple of years, this contraction slowedsomewhat in 2012, suggesting that a return to growth could be observed overthe next few years. Indeed, market indicators point to small year-on-yeargrowth (in terms of employee numbers) up until 2015. Despite the fall inemployee numbers observed in 2011 and 2012, total industry turnover hascontinued to rise since 2009; while this growth may slow somewhat in 2012following the double-dip recession, incremental growth is expected from 2013onwards, with the market strengthening thereafter up until 2015 and possiblybeyond, with a similar trend to be observed in terms of capital expenditureover the next 4 to 5 years.



3. Work In Call and Contact Centres

INTRODUCTION

This chapter analyses the call and contact centres market in terms of employeesize, which is a good indicator as to how well the industry is performing andhow fast it is growing within the UK.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

According to figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS),employment in call centres and customer care observed growth in 7 out of theprevious 11 years, with declines observed in 2005, when figures fell by 2.1%;2009, when employee levels dropped by 7.1%; and in 2011 and 2012, whenemployee numbers dropped by 1.2% and 0.5%, respectively. The decline in2005 is likely to have been caused by the increasing number of UK businessesthat decided to move customer care and call centre operations to basesoverseas, such as in India or the Philippines, where property, energy and labourcosts are often cheaper. In 2009, 2011 and 2012, the declines experienced inemployment within the industry were principally down to the recession, whichhit the country during 2008/2009 and again in the first quarter of 2012. Thisresulted in soaring unemployment across a number of business sectors withinthe UK, including the service-based industry, which comprises call centres andcustomer care staff.

Along with the 416,000 employees estimated to have been employed withinthe call centres and customer care market in 2012 were 123,000 customerservice managers and supervisors, 55,000 of which were men and 68,000 ofwhich were women. Although not directly comparable with gender-specificfigures produced by the ONS referring to managerial positions within thissector — due to the introduction of a new Standard Occupational Classification(SOC) system for 2011 — it is thought that managerial and supervisory rolesamong women have decreased within call centres and customer carebusinesses over the past few years, while the number of men in such positionsincreased in both 2011 and 2012, although women still dominate in terms ofoverall employment.

Contact Centres Work In Call and Contact Centres


Table 3.1: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK (000 and %), April to June 2001-2012

Employment% Change

Year-on-Year

2001 325 -

2002 352 8.3

2003 362 2.8

2004 384 6.1

2005 376 -2.1

2006 388 3.2

2007 414 6.7

2008 421 1.7

2009 391 -7.1

2010 423 8.2

2011 418 -1.2

2012 416 -0.5

Note: employment figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for callcentres and customer care may understate the actual number of people working withinthe industry, as figures may only refer to companies whose principal business activity isacting as a contact centre and thus may exclude in-house operations.

Source: National Statistics website © Crown copyright material is reproducedwith the permission of the Controller of HMSO (and the Queen’s Printer forScotland)



Figure 3.1: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK (000), April to June 2001-2012

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

275

300

325

350

375

400

425

450

475

Note: employment figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for callcentres and customer care may understate the actual number of people working withinthe industry, as figures may only refer to companies whose principal business activity isacting as a contact centre and thus may exclude in-house operations.

Source: National Statistics website © Crown copyright material is reproducedwith the permission of the Controller of HMSO (and the Queen’s Printer forScotland)/Key Note

Similar to managerial level positions, women dominated employment atsub-management level as well, with 264,000 women employed as call centreagents or in customer care positions, compared with 152,000 men. Overall, thenumber of positions held by women increased by 4.8%, while the number ofpositions held by men fell by 9%.

According to the figures produced by the ONS, there were around 3.4 generalcall centre and customer care staff for every manager employed within thesector, suggesting that some organisations are top-heavy with managementstaff. Around 1.8% of total jobs are represented by this particular area of theeconomy and around 1 in 55 people are thought to be employed as a call centreoperative or within customer care.



Table 3.2: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK by Sector by Sex (000), April to June 2001-2012

Employment (000)

Men Women Total

2001

Call centres 24 54 77

Customer care 72 176 248

Total 2001 96 230 325

2002



Total 2002 108 244 352

2003



Total 2003 115 247 362

2004



Total 2004 110 274 384

2005



Total 2005 120 256 376

2006



Total 2006 118 269 388

Table continues...




...table continued

Employment (000)

Men Women Total

2007



Total 2007 130 284 414

2008



Total 2008 137 284 421

2009



Total 2009 134 257 391

2010



Total 2010 154 268 422

2011



Total 2011 167 252 418

Table continues...




...table continued

Employment (000)

Men Women Total

2012



Total 2012 152 264 416

Note: totals may not sum due to rounding at source; totals may not match those foundin Table 3.3 due to rounding.


Figure 3.2: Employment in Call Centres in the UK by Sectorby Sex (000), April to June 2001-2012

Men

Women

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

120




Figure 3.3: Employment in Customer Care in the UK by Sectorby Sex (000), April to June 2001-2011

Men

Women

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

75

100

125

150

175

200

225


In 2012, men accounted for 36.1% of all call centre employees, up from 31.2%in 2001. Meanwhile, the proportion of customer care roles filled by men in 2012stood at 36.8%, up from 29% in 2001. These figures suggest that the call centreand customer care jobs market has continued to attract greater interest amongmale candidates in recent years, although women have continued to dominatein terms of employment numbers within this sector. It should be noted,however, that women accounted for a greater proportion of part-time roleswhen compared with men, with 41.7% of women holding part-time positionsin call centres in 2012, compared with 16.4% of men. Similarly, 41% of womenworked part time in customer care, compared with just under a fifth (19.8%)of men. This could be down to more women opting for part-time positions dueto starting a family, looking after children or going on to participate in furthereducation.



Table 3.3: Employment in Call Centres and Customer Carein the UK by Type of Contract by Sex (000 and %),

April to June 2012

Full Time Part Time

Employment(000) % of Total

Employment(000) % of Total

Call centres

Men 51 83.6 10 16.4

Women 63 58.3 45 41.7

Customer care

Men 73 80.2 18 19.8

Women 92 59.0 64 41.0

Note: totals may not match those found in Table 3.2 due to rounding.


Figure 3.4: Employment in Call Centres in the UK by Typeof Contract by Sex (%), April to June 2011

Women part time 26.6%

Women full time 37.3%

Men full time 30.2%

Men part time 5.9%




Figure 3.5: Employment in Customer Care in the UK by Typeof Contract by Sex (%), April to June 2011

Women part time 25.9%

Women full time 37.2%

Men full time 29.6%

Men part time 7.3%


Despite the 1.2% decline recorded by the ONS in terms of employees workingat call centres and in customer care, data compiled by Incomes Data Source(IDS) in its 2012 survey Pay and Conditions in Call and Contact Centres, whichincluded responses from 54 organisations, reveal that 41% of businessesregistered growth in their workforce over the past year, around the same aslast year. However, the majority of companies observed no change in employeenumbers during the past 2 years.

HOME WORKING — BENEFITS AND BARRIERS

In recent years, a greater number of contact centre businesses have beguninvesting in a ‘virtual’ model. This can mean that agents are located across anumber of different sites, either in their own home or in small officesthroughout the country. The largest virtual contact centre operating in the UKis The Co-operative Travel Group’s Future Travel division, which operates anetwork of around 630 home-based operatives. The move by The Co-operativetowards a virtual contact centre model has provided a number of benefits, notonly to staff, but also to the company. As Peter Healey, Technical Director ofFuture Travel, reveals:

“We’ve reduced staff churn by offering flexible home workingto, for example, new mothers returning to work part time, orolder people looking to reduce their hours but not yet retire. Inthe travel industry, an effective home working centre meansthat you keep valuable knowledge and experience within thecompany. Being able to add or reduce lines to fit peak bookingtimes, such as evenings and weekends, means that we can plancapacity.”



Other benefits that this type of virtual model provides to businesses include:

• allowing businesses to expand their contact centres without having topurchase new office space

• enabling contact centres to remain open beyond peak time hours, e.g. lateat night or at weekends

• eliminating or reducing office costs and other administrative overheads

• reduced staff attrition, as businesses can recruit from a much wider pool ofcandidates, which can help to improve the quality of agents

• providing the ability to operate a multiple number of contact centres basedin a variety of locations

• travel-to-work costs are eliminated for staff, which can be equivalent to a15% increase in salary; home-based work also provides greater flexibility foremployees wishing to work variable hours or on a part-time basis.

The implementation of a virtual contact centre model can result in significantstart-up costs and can be a complex process, as it involves changes toinfrastructure and upgrading technology and software in order to facilitatehome-based workers. A recent survey undertaken by Jabra and analysis firmFrost & Sullivan in June 2012 — which questioned 250 contact centre managersin Great Britain, France, the US, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India— revealed that 84% of managers saw the emergence of employing remoteagents as the next big trend within the industry. Furthermore, 68% revealedthat they believed employing remote agents would be the future of contactcentres in their area.

Despite this, there remain a number of barriers to implementing a virtualmodel. According to the survey undertaken by Jabra and Frost & Sullivan, 96%of UK contact centre managers stated that the lack of everyday face-to-facecommunication with employees was a deterrent, while 70% cited slow Internetconnection speeds as a weakness of this approach.

STAFF TURNOVER IN CONTACT CENTRES

Staff attrition rates, that is the rate at which staff leave, are notoriously highin the contact centres industry, at around 20%. However, this figure is thoughtto have reduced slightly in recent years, with more people keen to hold ontotheir jobs during the ongoing economic downturn, which causedunemployment to soar.



The main reasons for high staff attrition rates in the UK within the contactcentres market is down to many employees taking roles within such businessesas stop-gaps or short-term fillers, with many staff thought to be graduates whoare likely to leave once their studies are finished or when a more permanent,career-driven role has been found. High attrition rates can have a significanteffect on a contact centre’s effectiveness and can result in a lack of consistencyand loss of quality customer service. For example, according to recruitment firmHays’ recent 2011 report Gearing for Change: Salary and Benefits Guide, 54%of contact centre organisations expected to encounter a shortage ofexperienced applicants when recruiting staff.

High staff turnover can also have a significant impact on business costs, withthe Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) revealing thatthe average cost for replacing staff is around £6,125, rising to £9,000 for seniormanagers. As a result, many contact centres have tried to retain the staff thatthey have by extending their range of staff benefits. According to the 2011study undertaken by recruiter Hays, one of the most effective staff benefits forattracting and retaining staff is the provision of overtime or time off in lieu forworking extra hours, with 71% of employers rating this as an important factorin reducing staff attrition. From an employee’s perspective, the provision of aflexible working scheme was also highlighted as important, with nearly ninein every ten jobseekers within the contact centres industry agreeing that thiswas the case — although this compares with less than half (49%) of contactcentres that actually offered flexitime or home working, while 12% revealedthat flexible working was only offered to staff that were parents or carers.Furthermore, nearly a third (34%) of employers raised concerns over unrealisticsalary expectations among employees. Other benefits offered by contactcentres to staff included free or subsidised gym membership (19%); generousdiscounts on products and services (45%); and a joining bonus during theemployees’ notice period (5%).

Despite the high attrition rates observed within the contact centres market,the majority of businesses find it relatively easy to recruit new staff, witharound 70% of companies reporting that hiring staff had not been a problemover the past year, according to survey data collated by IDS. This is up from lastyear, when 61% of respondents revealed that they had no problem inrecruiting new employees and is nearly up to the same level of 72% as observedin 2009/2010. The ongoing economic difficulties and the recessions of2008/2009 and 2012 have resulted in high unemployment and thereforegreater demand for jobs, particularly among younger people.



SALARY

According to a report undertaken by recruitment consultancy Hays, the highestwages across the contact centres market were in resource planning in thesupport sector, with those in London and Northern Ireland earning a typicalannual salary of £26,000. Employees living in London were able to negotiatehigher salaries for inbound call handlers, where the typical wage was £18,000.This compares with £15,500 at the lower end of the pay scale on the Southcoast in England. However, those handling outbound calls were found to havehigher wages across the industry, with salaries ranging from £20,000 perannum in London to £16,500 on the South Coast.

Cost-cutting measures undertaken by outsourcing businesses during therecession has had a small effect on permanent employees’ wages over the pastcouple of years; although this has been more noticeable among temporaryworkers, which have observed a drop in hourly rates, according to Hays. Thereport undertaken by Hays also reveals that multilingual candidates continuedto outperform their peers, following increased demand for employees thatspeak several languages, driven by international growth and cross-bordertrading. Greater demand for Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking candidateshas increased in recent years, while a small number of companies have soughtto employ Arabic and Japanese speakers.

At managerial level, wages in London and the South East are thought to beslightly higher, due to the increased number of international businesses withheadquarters in and around the City. According to Hays, candidates cannegotiate salaries up to £120,000 in the South East and London, and up to£100,000 in Essex, East Anglia and the Home Counties, for executive or strategicroles. In comparison, staff in senior roles in the North West and Yorkshire canearn upwards of £70,000 for contact centre management positions.



Table 3.4: Typical Salaries Within Contact Centres in the UKby Region by Type of Job (£), 2011

Telesales andTelemarketing Support Customer Services

Inb

ou

nd

Ou

tbo

un

d

Train

er

Reso

urce

Pla

nn

er

Up

sellin

g

Call H

an

dle

r

Back

Office

London 18,000 20,000 24,000 26,000 20,000 18,000 17,500

South coast 15,500 16,500 22,000 22,000 16,500 15,500 13,500

Essex & EastAnglia 16,500 17,500 22,000 24,000 16,500 15,500 14,000

Home Counties 17,000 18,000 22,000 24,000 16,500 15,000 14,000

South West 16,500 17,500 21,000 24,000 16,000 15,000 13,500

Midlands 16,500 17,500 22,000 24,000 16,000 15,000 13,500

North West 17,000 19,000 21,000 24,000 16,000 15,000 13,500

North East 16,000 17,000 21,000 22,000 14,000 13,000 12,800

Yorkshire 16,500 18,000 21,000 22,000 14,000 13,000 12,800

Wales 16,500 17,500 21,000 23,000 16,000 14,500 13,500

Scotland 16,500 18,000 22,000 24,000 16,200 15,000 13,500

Northern Ireland 17,500 19,500 24,000 26,000 16,500 15,000 14,000

Source: Gearing for Change: Salary and Benefits Guide, 2011 © Hays

According to IDS’ annual Pay and Conditions in Call and Contact Centres surveypublished in 2012, despite ongoing economic difficulties, call centre workersexperienced a median pay increase of 2% in the year ending June 2012,compared with a median increase across the whole economy of 2.6% over thesame period. Pay freezes in the public sector are thought to be having adownward influence on the median, however, although increases inprivate-sector call centres were lower than the private sector as a whole, at2.5% compared with 3%.



The effects of the recession have not had a significant impact on employmentwithin the contact centres market, with Hays revealing that managerial levelpositions were relatively static over the past couple of years. Supervisory andmid-management roles saw some change, with several employers able toreduce costs by revising salaries downwards during the economic downturns,reflecting heightened competition among jobseekers. In contrast, staff withspecial skills — such as resource planners, analysts and dialler managers — werethought to have the greatest opportunities for negotiating on pay; while teamleaders and managers in collections teams were also in demand.

Government spending cuts and redundancies within the public sector over thepast few years has been a worry for the industry; however, so far, these eventshave not been seen to have had a significant effect on contact centre staffworking within the public sector, possibly as many of these employees arefrontline workers and thus more likely to be protected. Nevertheless, goingforward, many public-sector organisations are thought to be consideringmergers as a way of reducing costs, while fewer public-sector employers arehiring interim staff, instead relying on existing managers to pick up extraproject work. In the private sector, however, interim managers are thought tobe faring better.

TRAINING

Although working conditions in contact centres are understood to haveimproved in recent years following efforts to provide better customer serviceand a more professional workplace, along with giving employees moreopportunities for progression within their company, the industry still has a badreputation for having high staff turnover and poor staff concessions.

According to a survey undertaken by public service union Unison in June 2012,almost a quarter of call centre workers have had their toilet breaks restricted,while seven out of ten reported eye strain and 80% said that their work causedthem to feel stressed. Another study carried out by the University of Durhamin August 2011 into conditions in contact centres in the North East — wherearound one in 20 people are employed as call agents — found that, althoughthe majority of workers were found to be content with their conditions, a largeproportion complained about the low rates of pay and lack of opportunitiesfor promotion and advancement, with many labelling such jobs as ‘dead ends’.To this end, some call centre workers have even opted to stage protests, withcivil service call centre staff going on strike in April 2011 after labelling theirworking conditions in the public sector as ‘dark satanic mills’. According to theworkers’ regional union secretary, the reason for the strike included employeesbeing over-worked, overly monitored and forced to try and meet arbitrarytargets. However, the workers’ employer, the Department for Work andPensions (DWP) labelled the walkout ‘cynical’ and underlined the fact that onlya minority of staff had supported it.



A number of companies have aimed to improve the level of professionaltraining that they provide staff in order to increase the levels of staff that theyretain and, hence, reduce attrition. However, although 83% of jobseekersrevealed that they wanted to work for a company that invests in their trainingand development, only 10% of employers actually offered this particularbenefit, according to Hays’ annual report Gearing for Change: Salary andBenefits Guide 2011.

The rising importance of providing good customer service through contactcentres in the UK has resulted in many employees opting to invest significantlyin the provision of staff training. The increasing number of channels throughwhich staff communicate with customers has also meant that it has becomenecessary to provide training over multiple communications channels,including the Internet, e-mail and fax; while the installation of InternetProtocol (IP) integrated staff interfaces has meant that demand for staff withgood technological skills has risen. The level of service provided by contactcentre staff has also expanded significantly in recent years, with manyemployees providing highly technical and sector-specific advice to customers,thus necessitating a high level of skill and training among staff. According toSkills CFA, the average call centre operative receives 12 days of training a year,with 50% more training provided to outbound call agents.

A range of vocational and knowledge-based qualifications can also be takento supplement call centre operatives’ skills. Professional training body Edexcelsupplies National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and competence-basedqualifications through the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) oncontact centres, as well as Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC)specialist and short-course qualifications for contact centre supervisory skills.Skills CFA has also drawn up a list of contact centre National OccupationalStandards, which are designed to be used in the contact centres market, as wellas QCF units, which are designed to cover a wide range of skills and furtherknowledge for call centre operatives. A small number of universities, such asTeesside University and the University of Greenwich, have even begun to offerfoundation degrees in contact centre management and customer service.



4. In-House and Outsourcers

INTRODUCTION

In-house contact centres are offshoots of specific departments within a widercompany and are responsible for day-to-day communications with customers.They usually fulfil administrative functions; provide advice to callers; and/orprocess payments. Some of the companies with the largest in-house call centresinclude Direct Line, Lloyds TSB and Barclaycard. A number of companies havealso developed into outsourcing contact centre businesses after starting off asin-house operations; for example Vertex Data Science, which used to be partof United Utilities, and Ventura, the third-party customer services managementdivision of Next PLC. In July 2011, business process outsourcing (BPO) giantCapita Group — which currently holds a number of contracts with Central andLocal Government and across the private sector — revealed that it had acquiredVentura, before going on to purchase Vertex’s private-sector business inSeptember 2011.

The UK contact centres market is dominated by in-house specialists, witharound 65% of the industry thought to be accounted for by in-house call andcontact centres. Since the beginning of the 21st Century, however, this sectorof the market has been affected by the increasing number of companies optingto use BPO firms or outsourced contact centre businesses based overseas, whichare often cheaper and provide ready-made contact centre solutions and basictraining for call centre operatives.

OUTSOURCING

Outsourcing customer communications to out-of-house contact centrespecialists can be extremely beneficial to certain companies, as outsourcersoften provide a high level of customer service and already have significantexperience in operating a successful contact centre business. Outsourcing callcentres also helps to reduce staff, facility and infrastructure costs; increasesservice levels and response times; improves customer service; and drives profit.Despite this, many customers have a negative opinion of outsourcers and somebusinesses can be reluctant to outsource their customer service operations forfear that knowledge, particularly pertaining to specific in-house operations,would be lost in doing so.

In October 2012, Deloitte and callcentre.co.uk undertook a survey of 150industry specialists, including outsourcers and client organisations, in order toinvestigate specific concerns regarding outsourcing within the contact centresindustry. The survey found that over 90% of client organisations describedtheir relationship with their outsourcer as a partnership or strong relationship.One of the main drivers for outsourcing was the increased flexibility andscalability that it provides, with 70.9% of client organisations agreeing thatthis was the case. Cost reduction (55.5%) and improvements to customerservice (48%) were also rated as important reasons for outsourcing.

Contact Centres In-House and Outsourcers


The majority of contact centres were found to be comfortable in outsourcingtraditional contact channels, such as telephony services. However, despite mostclient organisations stating that they would consider outsourcing responsesprovided via social media, only a few companies had actually done so. Thiscould be because companies prefer to retain a social media presence in-house,where it can be better controlled and managed — something that can beparticularly important in the case of a possible public relations (PR) disaster.Nevertheless, increasingly more outsourcers are including social mediacommunications as part of their provision nowadays, which suggests thatdemand for such services could increase in the near future. Client organisationswere also found to be protective over their sales-related activities, includingtelesales, marketing and online sales, with many companies opting to keepsuch activities in-house instead.

The survey undertaken by Deloitte and callcentre.co.uk revealed thatmulti-sourcing — that is using a variety of outsourcers — was also popularamong client organisations, with 75% of respondents using more than onesupplier. It is thought that this figure could decrease over the next few yearsas larger companies look to save costs by consolidating their outsourcingcontracts.

The majority of client organisations rated data security as the most importantfactor taken into consideration when choosing an outsourcer, with allrespondents agreeing that this was the case. Experience in the field (90.5%),ability to recruit (90%) and the quality of contact centre environment (85%)were also rated highly by client organisations. In contrast, the location of anorganisation (45%), corporate social responsibility (CSR [45%]) and the size ofan organisation (30%) were less likely to be taken into consideration bycompanies when choosing an outsourcer.

Table 4.1: Important Factors When Choosing an Outsourcer(% of client organisations), 2012

Data security 100.0

Experience in field 90.5

Ability to recruit 90.0

Quality of contact centre environment 85.0

Investment in staff 85.0

Experience of senior management team 81.0

Experience in industry sector 80.0

Price 80.0

Investment in technology 80.0

Business continuity/disaster recoveryarrangements 80.0

Table continues...



Table 4.1: Important Factors When Choosing an Outsourcer(% of client organisations), 2012

...table continued

Client testimonials 65.0

Scalability 60.0

Accreditations/adherence to industry standards 55.0

Location of organisation 45.0

Corporate social responsibility 45.0

Size of organisation 30.0

Source: Deloitte and callcentre.co.uk

Figure 4.1: Top Ten Factors When Choosing an Outsourcer(% of client organisations), 2012

Data security

Experience in fieldA

bility to recruitQ

uality of contact centre environment

Investment in staff

Experience of senior managem

ent team

Experience in industry sector

Price

Investment in technology

Business continuity

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

Note: business continuity includes disaster recovery arrangements.

Source: Deloitte and callcentre.co.uk/Key Note



The majority of client organisations questioned by Deloitte andcallcentre.co.uk believed that it took over 6 months for outsourcers to achievea satisfactory result, with around 60% of respondents agreeing that this wasthe case, suggesting that it can take some time for optimal performance to beachieved when outsourcing. However, over 40% of outsourcers surveyedrevealed that added value was reached in the first 3 months of a newpartnership.

The study carried out by Deloitte and callcentre.co.uk also identified a numberof trends tipped for the future. Demand for outsourcing is expected to be highin sectors such as retail; technology and telecommunications; retail bankingand insurance; and business services. Limited growth is forecast for themanufacturing, travel and transportation, and media sectors. It was also foundthat price pressures are becoming an increasing area of concern for outsourcersfollowing the economic recession, suggesting that out-of-house organisationswill need to remain competitive in terms of price in order to achieve marketshare. The number of outsourcers seeking to widen the number ofcommunications channels that they service is likely to increase in the future,with many expected to invest in online channels such as web chat, social mediaand smartphone integration over the next couple of years.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

In November 2012, UBM announced the results of its annual study into the top50 contact centres based in the UK, which are ranked according to the level ofcustomer service that they provide The survey takes into account a variety ofcommunications channels, including e-mail, web chat and telephony services.Dignity Caring Funeral Services, which is a market leader in the insurance andfinancial services sector industry, achieved the highest overall score at 95.6%and came top in the Best in the Insurance & Financial Services Sector and BestSmall Centre categories. Clothing firm Charles Tyrwhitt came second, with anoverall score of 95.31%, followed by express parcel delivery firm DPD, whichwas given a score of 94.68%.

Within the banking and finance sector, Nationwide came out top with a scoreof 92.86% — more than 5 percentage points higher than the industry averagescore. In the public sector, the General Medical Council (GMC) led with 92.45%and, in the travel industry, Best Western Hotels led, with a score of 91.72%.E-retailer Charles Tyrwhitt was also scored as a provider of the Best WebchatServices; while Royal Mail Door-to-Door was rated as the Best E-mailsCommunicator.

Further data collated by UBM during its investigation into the top 50 UK callcentres by customer service revealed that 96% of customers found that theygot through to call centre operatives on the first attempt; with 96% alsoagreeing that they felt their enquiry was completely resolved. The number ofcustomers put on hold had also fallen by half from 2009, to just 9% in 2012,with only 3% of all calls being transferred. On top of this, 73% of customersthat used call centres included in the top ten revealed that their call hadenhanced their perception of the brand.



Table 4.2: The UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service(% score), 2012

Sector Score

Rank Company

1 Dignity Caring Funeral Services Insurance & financial services 95.60

2 Charles Tyrwhitt E-retailers 95.31

3 DPD Service providers 94.68

4 The White Company E-retailers 94.38

5 heateam Service providers 93.69

6 Royal Mail Door-to-Door Service providers 92.93

7 Charities Aid Foundation Public sector 92.87

8 Nationwide Banking/finance 92.86

9 General Medical Council Public sector 92.45

10 ASDA Retail 92.42

Source: Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service © UBM

Figure 4.2: The UK’s Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service(% score), 2012

Dignity Caring Funeral Services

Charles Tyrwhitt

DPDThe W

hite Company

heateam

Royal Mail Door-to-Door

Charities Aid Foundation

Nationwide

General Medical Council

ASDA

91.5

92.0

92.5

93.0

93.5

94.0

94.5

95.0

95.5

96.0

96.5

Source: Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service © UBM/Key Note



5. Marketing and Outbound Calls

INTRODUCTION

Contact centres that specialise in telemarketing are generally outbound innature, with calls to customers focusing on sales or participation in marketingsurveys. Around 12.5% of call centres are dedicated outbound call centres andonly 16% of call operatives are thought to carry out outbound calling in theUK, suggesting that this is still a relatively small area of the overall market.

Customers have become increasingly wary of receiving calls from bothtelemarketers and telesales firms in recent years following a rise in the numberof scams among such companies, as well as increased concerns over identitytheft. Outbound calls or cold calling can often be intrusive to customers, asthey are often made during out-of-work hours in the evening. The use ofauto-diallers, which automatically phone a list of customers, and calls that usepre-recorded sales messages can also be frustrating to consumers and can, asa result, serve to damage brand image and reputation. Nuisance callers, suchas accident at work and no win no fee companies, along with those involvedin payment protection insurance (PPI) claims, have also caused rising frustrationamong customers, with some consumers even going so far as to sue suchbusinesses for time wasting.

The outbound sector is tightly regulated and efforts have been made to curbthe level of calls received by customers in the UK; people can also sign up tothe Telephone Preference Scheme (TPS) to opt out of receiving any sales calls.Currently, over 15 million telephone numbers in the UK (approximately 60%of households) are signed up to the TPS.

OUTBOUND ACTIVITY

Key Note estimates that around 12.5% of call centres based in the UK primarilydeal with outbound calling, while the largest proportion (39%) operate amixture of both inbound and outbound activities. Those companies that doprocess outbound calls are primarily engaged in telesales or telemarketingactivities. According to figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics(ONS) in Q2 2012, there were 41,000 people employed as telephonesalespeople, the majority of whom were men (51.2%), along with 11,000market research interviewers. Major vertical markets that operate outboundcall centres include outsourcers, and insurance and financial servicescompanies.

Although outbound activity within call centres still represents a relatively smallproportion of the overall market, this particular sector of the market has beengrowing in recent years, following the increased uptake and importance ofcustomer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as databases that holdvital information about possible target markets and audiences. This has led toa greater proportion of call agents dealing with outbound calls in order tocontact existing clients.

Contact Centres Marketing and Outbound Calls


Call Blending

Call blending is an element of outbound calling which involves agentsparticipating in both inbound and outbound calls. This can help contact centresto better regulate both inbound and outbound calls and can thus result in‘increased agent productivity, streamlined staff and improved customerservice’, according to callcentrehelper.com.

Furthermore, the increasing number of people that are now very wary oftelesales or telemarketing calls can be circumvented by utilising an up-sell orcross-sell opportunity following interest registered during an inbound call. Thisparticular method should be implemented with care so as not to detract frombuilding a solid and positive customer relationship.

Call blending is used in around 39% of UK contact centres, the majority ofwhich are larger organisations that possess the facilities and staff numbers todeal with a large call volumes — both inbound and outbound. Mostorganisations that utilise call blending do so in order to increase productivity;for example, by switching to outbound calling when inbound calls are low.Various types of call centre technology can be used to facilitate this particularstrategy, such as computer telephony integration (CTI) — which prompts scriptsfor outbound calls to run on specific terminals — and automatic call diallers,although the former should be used with care in order for companies to complycorrectly with legislation, as governed by Ofcom (see later in the Chapter forfurther information).

Although call blending can result in increased productivity and improvedcustomer service, research from callcentrehelper.com shows that if thisparticular type of strategy is not handled correctly it can lead to a reduction incustomer satisfaction by 10% to 15% and a fall in employee satisfaction by20% to 20%. This suggests that companies need to be careful when recruitingstaff and must ensure that training is provided to ensure both inbound andoutbound calling can be carried out in an efficient manner. Companies mayalso consider splitting their workforce into three main groups — inbound,outbound and call blending — in order to deal with incoming and outgoingcalling in the most efficient way.

A Multichannel Strategy

The increasing number of channels now used by contact centres, such as e-mail,direct marketing material, text messaging and social media, has driven thenecessity of utilising a multichannel strategy encompassing a variety of media.Although these types of channels may not provide the best sales portal, theycan be used extremely effectively in the dissemination of an integrated andconsistent marketing campaign.



The rising uptake of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computerswhich can connect to the Internet and thus provide access to a range ofcommunications tools such as e-mail and social networking, has also increasedthe necessity of multichannel strategies, which incorporate the changing wayin which consumers now handle and access data. Despite this, a recent studyundertaken by Silverpop in April 2012 revealed that there was a clearbreakdown when it came to actual integration within marketing programmes,with only 13% pursuing an integrated campaign across mobile, social mediaand e-mail. The way in which businesses handle data received via interactionsfrom social networking sites and the way in which such sites are in turn usedto disseminate marketing campaigns has also caused problems amongbusinesses, with only a small number of companies actually bothering toevaluate the frequency and reach of consumer engagement across thesechannels. These indicate a clear need for correct and efficient social media andmultichannel marketing campaign management, as well as clear and concisereturn on investment (ROI) tools. While ROI is often difficult to calculate interms of assessing the success of a particular marketing campaign across avariety of channels, this area of the industry has continued to improve and islikely to continue to do so over the next few years as the popularity of mobilecommunication channels increases.

LEGISLATION

Contact centres that engage in outbound calls are tightly regulated in the UK,following a rising number of customer complaints to communications industryregulator Ofcom concerning cold calling, which can often by frustrating andannoying to customers. The following provides further details of the legislationcurrently in place to protect customers from misuse of electroniccommunications and nuisance callers (including communications transmittedvia fax and text).

Ofcom

Tackling Abandoned and Silent Calls

Ofcom is the regulator for the communications industry within the UK. Part ofthe organisation’s remit is to oversee the compliance of the CommunicationsAct 2003, which stipulates that companies are guilty of an offence if theypersistently use the public electronic communications network to make callswhich cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to individuals. In2010, Ofcom published new guidelines on tackling persistent nuisance calls,including abandoned and silent calls, as well as unsolicited marketing callswhich do not include live speech and those that fail to present calling lineidentification (CLI) that is valid or accurate. Abandoned calls refer to callswhere the connection is established but terminated by its originator in thecircumstances where the call is answered by a live individual; while silent callsrefer to calls where the recipient hears nothing on answering the phone andhas no means of establishing whether anyone is at the other end. Both typesof calls are deemed by Ofcom to cause annoyance and inconvenience tocustomers.



The majority of these types of calls are thought to be the product of automatedcalling systems (ACS), such as predictive or power diallers used by contactcentres, which are programmed to generate and attempt to connect calls.However, if there are not enough call centre agents to take such calls, therecipient may receive silent or abandoned calls or could be played anautomated message.

Ofcom also closely monitors the usage of answer machine detection (AMD)technology, which is sometimes used in conjunction with ACS. AMD technologydisconnects calls made to answer machines before they are put through to callcentre agents — this is significant as around 30% to 50% of all outbound callsare made to answer machines — thus increasing the efficiency of a contactcentre. However, the use of AMD technology can lead to ‘false positives’,where a call is falsely identified as being answered by an answering machine,when in fact it has been answered by a live person. This can result in anabandoned call and thus can be a source of stress for the recipient. Thedetection of an answer machine by AMD technology can also lead to repeatsilent calls over a short period of time as the ACS retries the number, leadingto the consumer receiving several silent calls a day.

Ofcom governs policy over the use of such technology and the delivery ofoutbound calls with the aim of tackling the level of abandoned and silent callsreceived by customers. Under the organisation’s 2008 Revised statement ofpolicy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network orservice, Ofcom set out a number of policy guidelines pertaining to this subjectmatter, which outbound call centres must comply with:

• abandoned call rates should be no more than 3% of live calls calculated percampaign (i.e. across call centres) or per call centre (i.e. across campaigns)over any 24-hour period and shall include a reasoned estimate of AMD falsepositives

• any call made by the called person to the contact number provided shall notbe used as an opportunity to market to that person, without that person’sconsent

• calls which are not answered must ring for a minimum of 15 seconds beforebeing terminated

• for each outbound call, a CLI number should be presented to which a returncall may be made which is either a geographical number or a non-geographicnumber adopted as a presentation number, which satisfies Ofcom’sguidelines pertaining to presentation numbers

• in the event of an abandoned call, a very brief recorded information messagemust be played which contains information such as the identity of thecompany on whose behalf the call was made; details of a no charge (0800)or special services basic rate (0845) number the called person can contact sothey can opt to decline to receive further marketing calls from that company;and no marketing content

• records should be kept for a minimum period of 6 months that demonstratecompliance with Ofcom’s rules



• when an abandoned call has been made to a particular number, any repeatcalls to that number in the following 72 hours may only be made with theguaranteed presence of a live operator.

In 2010, Ofcom once again revised its policy regarding outbound calls madefrom telemarketers and telesales personnel, particularly that governing AMDequipment. Under the revised guidelines, outbound callers must ensure thatwhen a call is made and identified by AMD equipment as being picked up byan answering machine (including false positives), any repeat calls to thatspecific number within the same 24-hour period may only be made with theguaranteed presence of a live recipient. The new policy was brought into forceon 1st February 2011. Ofcom also has the power to fine repeat offenders ofthe policy rules regarding silent and abandoned calls up to £2m.

Despite Ofcom’s efforts, the organisation’s most recent Consumer ConcernsOmnibus Survey, undertaken in September 2012, revealed that 40% of alladults had received silent calls (via landlines and/or mobile phones) and 40%had received a marketing text message to which they had not opted in toreceive. Overall, 62% of all adults had received live marketing calls, i.e. wherea call centre operative had attempted to sell them a particular service orproduct.

Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations cover a range of rulesgoverning the way organisations send direct marketing by electroniccommunications channels, including texts and faxes. Under these rules,organisations are not allowed to send marketing text messages that customershave not agreed to receive, unless:

• the customer was given an opportunity to opt out of texts when their detailswere collected and, if they did not refuse, were given a simple way to optout of all text messages received

• the messages refer to similar products or services offered by the sender

• the sender has obtained the customers’ details through a sale or negotiationsfor sale.

The Regulations also govern marketing material sent via fax and stipulate thatorganisations should not send any marketing faxes to businesses or individualswho have registered with the Fax Preference Service (FPS).

The persistent sending of unsolicited marketing text messages and/or faxes andany breaches of the above rules are governed by the InformationCommissioner’s Office (ICO) and PhonepayPlus, which regulates products orservices such as competitions, television voting, helplines, adult entertainment,downloads, news alerts and interactive games that are charged to users’ phonebills or pre-pay accounts.



6. Contact Centre Software andTechnology Solutions

INTRODUCTION

One of the most important aspects within a contact centre business is thecorrect implementation of an efficient infrastructure, which includes: atelecommunications network such as a private branch exchange (PBX) orInternet Protocol (IP) system; hardware components, i.e. a computer network,automated calling systems (ACS), computer telephony integration (CTI)technology and answer machine detection (AMD) equipment; and a range ofsoftware, such as customer relationship management (CRM) tools — whichallow agents to gather information on the incoming caller — and workforceoptimisation tools, such as call recording solutions and interface analytics.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

Traditionally, contact centres have used a PBX telephone network, whichallows users to share a number of outside lines for making external phone callsor receive incoming queries; PBX networks also connect internal phones withina company and connect them to the a public switched telephone network(PSTN). This particular type of telecommunications infrastructure also runsalongside a packet-switched network, which sends any pertinent data — suchas customer records — to the call agent, alongside an incoming call.

In recent years, however, a growing number of contact centres have begun toinvest heavily in implementing an IP-enabled system, which uses Voice overInternet Protocol (VoIP) technology to extend functionality to other branchoffices, satellite locations or home workers. IP-enabled systems also allowreal-time communications to occur and convert voice traffic into digitalpackages that travel over networks via the Internet. Other IP-enabled systemcapabilities include:

• adaptable call handling to allow customisable call routing

• call routing based on customer database information

• call routing to agents depending on their skill set

• centrally managed console for management of varied locations and agents

• configurable telephony user interface

• providing screen pop-up boxes for incoming calls

• real-time displays of call centre activity to chart performance

• the ability to generate reports on call history and forecasts of staffrequirements

Contact Centres Contact Centre Software and Technology Solutions


• the ability to transfer calls across wide geographical regions

• the provision of a variety of VoIP business tools, which can be unified withinuser interfaces.

IP-enabled systems can often be beneficial and can work to save costs andincrease staff efficiency and the management of inbound calls. They can alsofacilitate home working and even virtual contact centres by providing a widegeographical network and can satisfy customer requirements more effectivelyusing skills-based call routing. IP-enabled systems are also relatively easy todeploy across a business and can be used in conjunction with traditionaltelephony networks.

According to a study undertaken by VoIP experts Telappliant in June 2012, IPtechnology is currently being used by more than 40% of UK businesses in orderto reduce telephony costs and improve efficiencies, with a further 25% ofbusinesses revealing that they have plans to review and implement VoIPsystems within the next 12 months. Larger businesses with staff numbers ofbetween 100 to 500 people are currently embracing VoIP technology muchfaster than smaller enterprises, most likely due to the implementation costsinvolved; however, the introduction of hosted VoIP solutions could help anumber of smaller firms to switch to IP telephony in the future.

The growth of the multichannel contact centre has also necessitated increasedinvestment in IP-enabled networks, which can transfer data over a variety ofcommunications channels, such as Web chat, e-mail, text messages and socialmedia. This has led to a rising number of companies installing unifiedcommunications (UC) systems and user interfaces within their businesses. UCrefers to the combination of a variety of communication channels, i.e. voice,video, e-mail and instant messaging (IM), and the communication betweenclient and call centre agent via the most appropriate channel. UC provides anumber of benefits to contact centres, in that it enables a more convenientway of transferring callers to the appropriate call centre agent — which canbe particularly useful to customers with specialist requests — while it alsoallows customers to contact an agent using a variety of communicationschannels, thus providing convenience and improved brand presence. Despitethese benefits, the adoption of UC within the UK has remained low, althoughgrowth has been increasing slightly in recent years.

HARDWARE COMPONENTS

The provision of operational hardware is extremely important in theday-to-day running of a contact centre. Hardware can include a range ofproducts from headsets, computers and telephones to more sophisticatedequipment, such as ACS, CTI technology and AMD equipment. Hardwarepurchases usually constitute the lowest upfront costs in the setup of a contactcentre, although expenditure on such items is necessary in order to achieveconsistent efficiency and to facilitate call agents’ daily responsibilities.



CRM AND SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

A range of CRM software solutions are available to contact centres. While somecompanies use on-premise software, in recent years, increasingly morecompanies have opted for a ‘hosted’ service, also known assoftware-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, such as those provided bySalesforce.com and Oracle. The majority of large software solutions companiesthat supply the contact centre industry have recently begun to broaden theirproduct range to include cloud-based solutions. Cloud-based solutions have anumber of benefits in that they help to bring together companies withmultiple sites, including home workers. In this way, cloud technology can oftenfacilitate the development of a virtual contact centre. Software supplied viathe ‘cloud’ can also help to save money, with many packages offering apay-as-you-go financial model, while also lowering capital expenditure onin-house computer servers and other storage hardware. Not only this, butcloud-based solutions often make it easier for companies to integrate newbusiness applications within their contact centre and can improve the disasterrecovery of customer information and data stored by companies.

The sections below describe in detail some of the CRM and business softwaresolutions currently utilised and available within the contact centre industry.

Call Recording

Over the past decade or so there has been increasing demand for call recordingsolutions within contact centres, in a bid to improve customer service and callquality, while also ensuring that data protection and Payment Card IndustryData Security Standards (PCI DSS) are met. The vast majority of contact centreshave implemented call recording technology across their businesses, with thehighest penetrations observed within the finance, technology, media andtelephony (TMT) oursourcing, and services sectors, particularly among largercentres, according to Skills CFA. Sophisticated call recording technology candetect patterns and anomalies, thus allowing companies to locate anywrongdoing within their business and improve customer service. Call recordingcan also ensure that agents follow the correct scripts and procedures whenprocessing transactions via the telephone and can help companies to deal moreeffectively with complaints or problematic customer queries. By monitoringcalls, contact centres can also collate data on the quality of calls and the timetaken to deal with income queries, which can also lead to improvements intraining going forward.



Dynamic Scripting

Dynamic scripting is used by a large number of contact centres and helps agentsto guide inbound conversations through the call in order to reach the desiredsolution. This type of scripting is useful in that it provides information to thecall centre operative dependent on the type of enquiry, while it also helps tosupply agents with information pertaining to data protection, which isparticularly important among those companies that process monetarytransactions via the telephone. Using dynamic scripting can have a number ofbenefits, as it helps to ensure a consistent and efficient call handling processand customer service experience. It can also reduce the average time take tohandle a call, as well as call transfer rates.

Nearly one-third of contact centres based in the UK use dynamic scripting ona frequent basis, although the majority of businesses do not utilise this type ofsoftware or only use it some of the time. This relatively low penetration couldbe down to the fact that using scripting can sometimes result in a very fixedand inflexible mode of conversation when talking to customers. While the useof scripting can be vital sometimes, particularly when reading out terms andconditions or payment information, it can also produce a rigid structure whenconversing with clients, which many customers do not appreciate. One solutionto this could be the use of flexible scripting options, which describes a generalconversation structure, including introductions and reminders regarding vitalinformation, but also allows the call agent to use their own initiative, i.e. inidentifying the customer’s needs and locating any opportunities for a ‘sell’. Thismethod helps to drive employee initiative and can also help to improvecustomer service and employee morale.

Interaction Analytics

Interaction analytics solutions help contact centre businesses to decipher thelarge volume of calls that are placed in order to gain strategic insightsconcerning factors such as: customer satisfaction; the popularity of certainproducts or services; the reason behind call spikes; and the effectiveness of arecent marketing campaign. Interaction analytics can include a variety ofdifferent solutions, such as speech analytics or ‘audio mining’, which convertsspeech into data to gauge a particular customer’s emotional response, e.g.anger or happiness; as well as real-time query and search solutions, which allowcall agents to search internal data sources, the Internet and partner sources inorder to gather as much information as possible when a particular caller querycomes in. In this way, companies can collate data on the success of inboundqueries or outbound selling/marketing campaigns. Interaction analyticssolutions can also help to reduce costs, improve the level of customer serviceprovided and help companies to deal more effectively with complaints orlitigation issues. Interaction analytics are now used by around 20% of contactcentres in the UK, although this figure is likely to double by 2015, as businessescontinue to reap the benefits of using this particular type of technology; it canoften provide informative and interesting insights into customer intentionsand can help businesses to identify potential sales opportunities.



Self-Service

A number of contact centres utilise speech recognition telephony self-servicesolutions, which help to route calls to the correct department or can evenanswer brief incoming queries. Internet self-service solutions can also be usefulin answering routine customer queries in a convenient and efficient manner.Despite this, only around 4% of contact centres are thought to solely rely onself-service systems, with the largest proportion (around 40%) using a mixtureof both live agent and self-service provision. The low uptake of self-servicechannels is thought to be down to poor design and implementation in manycontact centres, with a survey undertaken by Dimension Data in 2010 — whichquestioned 637 contact centres in 72 countries — revealing that only 16.1% ofbusinesses saw contact centre traffic directed to Internet self-service solutions,compared with a target of 34.5%. Only 15.9% of companies said that they sawtheir self-service solutions as being ahead of the competition, despite 89.8%underlining their importance in terms of customer service.



7. Promotion and Consulting

CUSTOMERS OPTING OUT

Customer contact details and information pertaining to customers’ buying andpurchasing habits can be extremely useful to contact centres, particularly thosedealing in telemarketing and sales, and companies strive to build upknowledge databases on customers in order to generate as many leads aspossible. However, for many customers, marketing and sales calls can be asource of extreme annoyance and, as a result, some people opt to remove theirdetails from public listings provided by the Electoral register, which can alsobe accessed by commercial organisations. Alternatively, consumers can sign upto the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), the official central opt-out registeron which customers can record their preference to not receive unsolicited salesor marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations do not makesuch calls to those that sign up to the TPS, unless they have prior consent to doso.

According to Callcredit Information Group’s annual edition of The 2012Electoral Roll Report, of the 47 million voting consumers in the UK, just under19 million decided to opt out of being included on the edited public listing,equating to an opt-out rate of 40.03%. This figure is down from around 45%in 2011 and 46% in 2010. This should have positive connotations for marketersand outbound call centres seeking to target potential customers. Further datafrom the report revealed that 30% of councils had seen more than half of theirresidents opting out in 2010 — down from 42% in 2011; while only 9% hadopt-out rates exceeding 60%, a significant reduction on the 16% observed inthe previous year. Regionally, the highest opt-out rate was registered in theSouth, along with Northern councils such as Harrogate, Wigan and Blackpool,while councils such as Salford, Bishop Auckland, Stoke-on-Trent and BlaenauGwent observed the lowest opt-out rates.

The edited Electoral Roll is not the only source of contact information forcustomers, with many companies — including Callcredit — supplying databasesof contacts through a variety of sources, such as demographic surveys andinsurance quotes. These types of databases can be crucial sources ofinformation to telemarketers, with data from Callcredit’s 2012 report revealingthat non-electoral roll sources contributed to an extra 28.5 million recordsbeing loaded onto Callcredit’s database, all of which contained additionalcontact details such as e-mail addresses, landline and mobile telephonenumbers.

Contact Centres Promotion and Consulting


EXHIBITIONS

A number of exhibitions focusing on the contact centres industry are heldacross the world, usually on an annual basis. Below are listed some of the mostpopular exhibitions:

• Call Centre & Customer Management Expo — a dedicated annual event forthe call centre and customer management industry that is usually held inEurope. The exhibition covers six key areas of the industry, including callcentre solutions; customer management; social media; training andmotivation; compliance and security; and outsourcing. It also provideseducational content, suppliers and networking opportunities. The nextannual event is due to be held at the Olympia Exhibition Centre in Londonbetween 2nd and 3rd October 2013.

• Middle East Call Centre Conference — includes industry insight into thecontact centres market and market trends in the Middle East. The exhibitionfeatures international experts, subject matter specialists and regionalprofessionals. The conference is designed and organised by event organiserInsights. The next event is due to be held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates(UAE) between 4th and 5th June 2013.

• Stratégie Clients (SeCa) — held annually in Europe, this exhibition covers arange of subjects affecting the customer service and contact centres industry.The next event is scheduled to take place in Paris at the Porte de Versaillesbetween 16th and 18th April 2013. Specialist subjects to be broached duringthe 2013 exhibition will include the customer experience; customer datamanagement; social innovation in the contact centre; multichannel customerrelationship; the state of play of social customer relationship management(CRM); and the development of contact centres.

• Customer Contact Association (CCA) Convention — each year the CCA hostsa convention during which several leading private- and public-sectorcustomer contact professionals gather to debate key current trends withinthe industry. The 2012 event was held in Glasgow between 6th and 7thNovember and had an attendance of more than 400 customer contactprofessionals. Convention speakers included leading brands John Lewis andCoca-Cola Enterprises, as well as mobile phone company giffgaff and publicsector leader the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

• Annual Call Center Exhibition (ACCE) Conference & Expo — a globalconvention for the contact centre community, the event features call centreworkshops, site tours, case studies, panels and discussions on a broad rangeof topics specific to the industry, as well as keynote speakers and the latesttechnologies and services from vendors. The next conference is due to beheld in Seattle, Washington, between 13th and 16th May in 2013.



• Callcenter Demo & Conference — provides demonstrations on a range oftools and techniques to be used in call centres, as well as keynotepresentations, case studies and networking opportunities. It focuses on fourmain subject areas including multi-channel technology management, peoplemanagement, operations management, and strategy and leadership. Thenext event is due to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, between 21st and23rd October 2013.

RELATED TECHNOLOGY EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS

There are also a number of events held across the globe which focus on thelatest product developments, technology and software within the contactcentres industry. Below are listed some of the most relevant exhibitionssupplying technological information to the contact centres industry:

• Unified Communications Expo — the leading UK business communicationsevent that features over 100 seminars on communications technologies andcovers themes such as convergence and virtualised communications; socialbusiness; flexible working; collaboration; and the benefit of mobility. Thenext event is due to take place between 5th and 6th March 2013 at theOlympia National Hall in London.

• ITEXPO — provides educational resources for resellers, enterprises, small- tomedium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Government agencies on how to selectInternet Protocol- (IP-) based voice, video, fax and unified communicationsfor their business or to resell. It also provides significant networkingopportunities and gives advice to service providers who wish to learn how toprofitably roll out services to their subscribers. The next scheduled event isdue to take place in the Miami Beach Convention Center in the US, between30th January and 1st February 2013.

• IP EXPO — the UK’s number one enterprise information technology (IT)event, providing extensive knowledge, advice and information on ITinfrastructure. The exhibition also includes 240 industry-leading exhibitorsand 260 seminar sessions across 18 main topics, as well as keynote speakersand presentations from high-profile members of the industry. The next eventis scheduled to take place between 16th and 17th October 2013 at Earls Courtin London.



INDUSTRY INFORMATION AND CONSULTING SERVICES

A range of intelligence resources are available to businesses wishing to seekfurther information on the general contact centres industry. Websites includecallcentrehelper.com, contactcentreworld.com and callcentre.co.uk (alsoknown as Call Centre Focus). Callcentrehelper.com also produces a magazineentitled Call Centre Helper, which is published online on a weekly basis andprovides advice on how to manage a call centre business effectively. The CCAand the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) also provide extensive marketresources for their members regarding the industry, with the former publishingan online monthly journal entitled inTouch, which profiles the latest industrynews, research, successes and challenges of its members.

A number of contact centre businesses also opt to use business consultancycompanies, particularly those with a good understanding of technology andinfrastructure implementation. IBM’s Business Consulting and IT Servicesdivisions, as well as Capgemini and Convergys, are some of the leading generalbusiness consulting firms. There are also a number of consultancy firms thatspecialise in advising within the contact centres industry; these include Sabio,Avaya and Cisco.



8. An International Perspective

INTRODUCTION

Despite the early rush of outsourcing to call and contact centre businesseslocated in India and the Middle East in the early 2000s — due to the low wagesand overhead costs offered by companies operating within the region — morerecently a number of UK businesses have transferred their contact centreoperations back to domestic locations, in order to better satisfy consumerdemand for locally based call centre agents, following a rising number ofcomplaints regarding miscommunication with overseas operatives. Over thepast few years, Spanish bank Santander, which owns Alliance & Leicester (A&L)and parts of Bradford & Bingley (B&B), moved its call centres back to the UKafter previously relocating to centres in Bangalore and Pune in India. The movecreated 500 new jobs in the UK, to add to the 2,000 that the company alreadyhad within its customer service department. Similar decisions have been madeby a number of other companies, such as BSkyB, which opened a new call centrein Newcastle in 2010, instead of opting for an overseas outsourcer; whileUnited Utilities and New Call Telecom both shifted their call centres back tothe UK after previously basing their operations abroad.

Competition from overseas centres remains strong within the industry,particularly from locations such as the Philippines — now the leading globalmarket within the contact centres industry — and South Africa, where wagesare often cheap and businesses have invested in upgrading contact centreoperations. India remains a strong global market as well, with manyoutsourcers with operations based in the country widening their approach toinclude business process outsourcing (BPO), which covers a wide range ofservices such as call centre and customer service operations, human resources(HR), and finance and accounting facilities.

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

Europe

The strong service-based economy in Europe has meant that demand forcontact centre operations has remained relatively level, despite ongoingeconomic concerns across the region and the Eurozone debt crisis, which hastroubled a number of countries such as Greece, the Republic of Ireland andSpain. Although some analysts such as Frost & Sullivan have predicted stronggrowth within the outsourcing market in Europe between 2011 and 2017 —particularly in sectors such as travel and hospitality, the public sector, and retailand consumer packaged goods (CPG) — the recent news that the Eurozonehad once again slipped into recession in the third quarter of 2012 is likely tohave a significant effect on European businesses over the next few years, whichcould lead to a decline in investment and demand for cheaper alternatives,such as those provided by companies based in the Philippines.

Contact Centres An International Perspective


Further data compiled by Frost & Sullivan in its 2011 report entitledContactCentre Outsourcing in Europe reveal that the market earned revenuesof around €13.06bn in 2010, with this figure expected to reach €16.04bn by2017. Technical support and sales functions are likely to observe the highestgrowth. Competition within the market is also expected to intensify over thenext few years as new participants enter the market, with market growthexpected to reach around 3% year-on-year up to 2017. The emergence of newcommunications channels, such as social media, Web chat and instantmessaging (IM) are also likely to factor strongly within the European marketin forthcoming years.

Middle East

India has traditionally dominated the global contact centres market in recentyears, with a number of businesses from Western English-speaking countries,such as the UK and the US — where services account for a large proportion ofgross domestic product (GDP) — seeking to outsource operations to countrieswere labour costs and overheads are cheaper. Until recently India led theglobal market; however, with many firms now opting to move operations backto domestic locations, coupled with intensified competition from thePhilippines, the market has seen business slow slightly over the past few years.

Despite this, India has remained a major player within the market, with manyoutsourcers that have operations based in the country investing significantsums of money into expanding the services that they offer, while upgradingtechnology and improving staff training. Although this has led to higher labourcosts, India has retained a strong advantage in BPO, which includes a varietyof administrative functions including customer service and call centreoperations. Indeed, according to investment news site 2point6billion.com,India’s overall outsourcing sector observed a growth of 14.8% in 2011 and isexpected to reach the $100bn mark by the end of 2012. Nevertheless, strongcompetition from overseas competitors means that growth over the nextcouple of years is unlikely to reach the levels observed before the 2008 globalfinancial crisis, when market growth was rising by an annual rate of 20%.

According to an article published by the Financial Times in June 2012, manyIndian companies have turned to specialist or niche markets in order to remaincompetitive, with a number of firms now offering a wide range of advancedservices that require dental workers, nurses, accountants, lawyers andmathematicians. Many outsourcing firms operating in the Indian market havealso decided to expand overseas by setting up offices in locations that are inhigh demand, such as Manila in the Philippines, where costs are often cheap.Leading companies operating within the Indian outsourcing market includeTata Consultancy Services and Wipro, both of which supply a number of BPOservices including contact centre and customer service operations.



Africa

South Africa dominates the contact centres market on the African continent,with many global services-based firms looking to outsource to offshore BPObusinesses that employ English-speaking staff. The past year has seen a numberof large BPO organisations set up operations within the country, with Indianfirm WNS — one of the world’s largest BPO businesses — acquiring SouthAfrican firm Fusion Outsourcing for £10m in June 2012. Fusion operates twocall centres in Cape Town in South Africa, with around 1,500 seats(workstations), and counts British Gas among its clients. In a similar move,British outsourcing giant Capita PLC — which currently fulfils a range ofcontracts for the British government and public sector as well contracts fromtelecommunications giant O2 — acquired South African contact centresolutions firm Full Circle in July 2012 for an undisclosed sum. The decision byCapita to expand to South Africa will see the firm invest ZAR500m in thecountry over the next 3 years.

New mobile telecommunications network Everything Everywhere (EE), whichservices around 27 million T-Mobile and Orange customers, also recently set upcontact centre operations in South Africa in August 2012, which will bemanaged by Merchants — a subsidiary of Dimension Data. Meanwhile, Serco,one of the world’s largest diversified outsourcing firms, recently revealed thatit would be establishing a new call centre operation in Cape Town to supporta 10-year contract worth £10m, which it won in May 2012 from Shop DirectGroup, one of the UK’s biggest online retailers.

It is likely that further growth will be observed in the South African contactcentres market over forthcoming years, with a 2010 white paper published byBritish-based firm Teleperformance estimating that around 10% of all contactcentre agents will be based in South Africa by 2014. Market growth within thecountry is likely to be facilitated by increased investment in new technology,infrastructure and telecommunications networks, as well as the provision of askilled workforce and quality training.

ASIA/PACIFIC

According to a report undertaken by Frost & Sullivan in 2012, entitledAssessment of the Asia-Pacific Contact Center Market, the region had3.48 million contact centre agent seats in 2011, with this figure estimated toreach 5.9 million by 2018. The market is led by the Philippines — which hasemerged as the largest contact centre market in the world following significantgrowth in recent years — while both Australia and the People’s Republic ofChina (PRC) have remained relatively robust in terms of growth.



The Philippines

In 2011, the Philippines officially overtook India as the leading contact centresmarket in the world. According to an article published by the BBC in May 2012,there are now more than 600,000 call centre workers based in the Philippines.Furthermore, the market is estimated to have observed annual growth ofbetween 25% to 30% in recent years, according to an article published by2point6billion.com in July 2012, with revenue thought to be around $11bntoday, compared with just $350m in 2001. Market growth has primarily beendown to the low labour costs and overheads that businesses based in thecountry offer. In addition, much of the Philippine population isEnglish-speaking, which has attracted businesses from the UK and the US thatare seeking to outsource in order to reduce outgoings, particularly during thedifficult economic period of recent years. As a result, many large corporationshave set up operations within the country of late, including AT&T, Expedia,The Hershey Company, Proctor & Gamble (P&G), IBM and Shell, with theirpresence only likely to facilitate further growth in the future. Call centreoperations based in the Philippines have also been quick to adapt to newtechnology trends within the market, with many switching to an internetprotocol- (IP-) based network in recent years and expanding activities toinclude a variety of communications channels such as e-mail, Web chat andsocial media.

Over the next few years, it is likely that the contact centres market within thePhilippines will continue to observe growth, with many firms seeking to followin the footsteps of the Indian market by diversifying into BPO, with figurescompiled by the Contact Center Association of the Philippines estimating BPOemployees to more than double by 2016, from around 600,000 to 1.3 million.Policies meted out by the Philippine Government are also likely to facilitategrowth within the country’s BPO industry, having offered tax breaks andfast-tracked permits for companies wishing to expand in this particular area.According to investment analysts 2point6billion.com, these factors should helpto drive market growth over the next few years, with Government planscurrently aiming to generate BPO revenues of $25bn by 2016, which would seesuch businesses account for 10% of GDP, compared with the 5% that theycurrently account for.

Australia

Australia is currently the second-largest contact centre market in the Asia/Pacific region, with figures from industry analyst Fifth Quadrant revealing thatthe industry is predicted to have reached a volume of around 228,700 seats in2012, up by 27.1% from 2007, after experiencing an average year-on-yeargrowth rate of around 4.3% over the past 5 years. Similar to the UK, in-housecontact centres dominate the industry, although the popularity of outsourcingis still relatively prevalent, particularly in domestic regions such as Tasmaniaand South Australia.



According to the Australian Contact Centre Outsourcing Market Studypublished by Callcentres.net in 2011, around 81% of all outsourcing byAustralian firms was undertaken domestically, while 19% of BPO services wereundertaken by companies based overseas, particularly in the Philippines, Indiaand Malaysia. Further data compiled by the report revealed that over half(53%) of the Australian companies that were surveyed outsourced at least onebusiness process, with 73% opting to outsource their call centre operations toother businesses in Australia; 20% outsourced to the Philippines; 13% to India;and 13% to New Zealand. The largest outsourcers in 2011 includedtelecommunications and utilities firms, which represented 20% of the totaloutsourcing market, and banking and insurance companies, which accountedfor 19%.

According to Frost & Sullivan’s 2012 Assessment of the Asia-Pacific ContactCenter Market, the Australian market is expected to observe a compoundannual growth rate (CAGR) of around 2.6% through to 2018, boosted by therising number of call centre operations now investing in new customerrelationship management (CRM) software, such as call analytics andmonitoring, as well as workforce optimisation tools, in order to improve thequality and efficiency of the customer service that they provide. Australian callcentres have also been quick to adopt cloud technology and social mediacommunication channels, with some even developing video contact centres.On top of this, the country has high adoption rates of home-based agentprogrammes, a trend which is likely to continue to gain momentum over thenext few years. Market growth is expected to be driven by increased domesticdemand over the next 5 to 6 years, with particular emphasis on the banking,financial services and insurance (BFSI) and telecommunications sectors, whichaccount for the majority of contact centre operations based in Australia. Boththe Government and education sectors are also likely to experience highgrowth over forthcoming years.

The PRC

According to an article published by Frost & Sullivan in July 2012, the contactcentre market in the PRC recorded a total revenue of $116.8m in 2010 and isestimated to reach a value of $255m in 2017. The PRC is currently thethird-largest market in the Asia/Pacific region, behind the Philippines andAustralia, but is expected to overtake Australia as the second largest marketby 2017. It is thought that investment in infrastructure and technology, alongwith general expansion activity, will contribute to the growth of the marketin the PRC over the next 3 years, with sectors such as banking and finance,telecommunications and Government driving increases in revenue, with thesethree industry areas representing 60% of the market in 2010. However, as themarket matures towards 2017, emerging sectors such as e-commerce,hospitality, retail and utilities are expected to observe higher growth than theoverall market, as focus shifts away from products to services.



NORTH AMERICA

Canada

Despite the Canadian contact centres market observing relatively significantgrowth between 1998 and 2006 — of around 27.7% per annum according tofigures collated by Statistics Canada — in recent years a number of businesses,particularly those that serve the US, have been hit hard by the American stockmarket crash of 2008/2009, as well as the US Government’s backlash againstoutsourcing to other countries and its recent campaign to bring more jobs backinto the country. As a result, a number of outsourcing firms providing contactcentre services have witnessed job cuts or closures over the past few years,including Sears Canada, which closed its Regina, Saskatchewan centre in 2009after deciding to move operations to the Philippines. More recently, outsourcerVirtual Agent Services Canada closed its operations down in Bathurst, NewSouth Wales in October 2012, after failing to attract significant levels ofbusiness. Other outsourcers, such as Convergys and Minacs, have also sufferedclosures or laid off staff within their Canadian operations over the past fewyears. According to Contact Centre Canada’s Annual Report 2012, whichsurveys a number of Canadian contact centre businesses on a quarterly basis,81% of organisations experienced a decrease in turnover in the 3 monthsending December 2011, with only 19% observing a rise. Furthermore, just 32%of companies questioned witnessed higher investment in training in the lastquarter of 2011, while 56% observed no change and 12% saw a decrease. TheCanadian contact centres market is likely to continue to be affected byeconomic fluctuations in North America and particularly in the US, with manycompanies opting to move facilities overseas to cheaper destinations in thePhilippines and India.

The US

The US contact centres market has mimicked trends observed in the UK, withmany companies opting to re-house their customer services operations indomestic locations in recent years, after previously outsourcing toorganisations based abroad in India and the Philippines. Indeed, according tothe National Association of Call Centers (NACC), employment in the US contactcentres market continued to grow in the third and fourth quarters of 2011,equating to 11 consecutive quarters of growth within the industry.Employment growth in the second half of 2011 was nearly triple the growthexperienced in the first half of the same year. During the third quarter of 2011,18,965 net new jobs were added to the industry, with a further 13,539 reportedin the fourth quarter. Outsourcers led the market, with major players such asConvergys Corporation, TeleTech Holdings, Sykes Enterprise and Stream GlobalServices all embarking on new hiring campaigns for the future.



Further data compiled by the NACC indicates that employment growth withinthe contact centres market in the US was driven by significant gains in the retailand entertainment sectors, which have seen a reversal of fortunes followingsignificant declines during the recession of 2008/2009. Insurance andtelecommunications businesses also observed strong growth in recruitment,however, the financial services sector continued to decline in terms ofemployment in the third and fourth quarters of 2011, due to continuedfluctuations within the economy and investor uncertainty; while theoutsourcing sector appeared to stabilise slightly.

Although the US market is thought to have shrunk slightly during the recessionof 2008/2009, since then conditions have continued to improve and the recentGovernment campaign to encourage home-grown jobs in order to boostemployment in the country appears to be working, suggesting that the markethas returned to growth and will continue to perform well over the next fewyears.

LATIN AMERICA

Brazil

The Brazilian contact centres market has continued to grow in recent years andis forecast to generate revenues of $3.61bn in 2012, up by 17% from 2011,according to news site TI Inside, citing data from the São Paulo direct marketingand telemarketing association Sintelmark. Organisations based in the SãoPaulo state represent approximately 60% of the national market, with around350,000 people working in contact centres, representing an increase of 10%on last year. The Brazilian market is expected to continue to grow over the nextfew years, with statistics collated by Frost & Sullivan estimating that the marketwill reach a value of $7.1bn by 2015, almost doubling in market size comparedwith 2012. However, while many other countries, such as India and thePhilippines — where much of the population is English-speaking —concentrate efforts on BPO to nations such as the US and the UK, in Brazil, mostorganisations focus on the local market or other Spanish-speaking countries.



Mexico

Mexico’s contact centres market remains one of the largest and most robust inLatin America, according to an article published by nearshoreamericas.com inOctober 2011, with some 20,000 businesses based in the country engaging insome type of contact centre activity. The largest companies with operations inthe contact centres market include Telfex, Teleperformance, Atento, Televista,Atencion Telefonica, b-connect and Digitex from Spain, while there are alsoare large number of small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) providingtelemarketing, collections services and market research services. Around 43%of businesses are located in and around Mexico City although, in recent years,several companies have relocated to different parts of the country, such asGuadalajara, Baja California and Puebla. Further data compiled by the InstitutoMexicano de Teleservicios (IMT) reveal that the contact centres market inMexico has continued to grow in recent years, with the number of agentpositions rising by 11% in 2011, down slightly from growth rates of 18% inprior years. Like in Brazil, however, future growth is likely to depend on thenumber business from the US and UK that are seeking to outsource to offshorecompanies.



9. PEST Analysis

POLITICAL

Ofcom to Fine Silent Call Repeat Offenders Up To £2m

In February 2011, communications industry regulator Ofcom announced newpowers that would allow it to fine companies which repeatedly make silentcalls to customers’ telephones. Silent calls often occur when contact centres useautomated telephone call technology to dial several numbers at once, but failto transfer these calls through to a live agent once answered by a customer ifall agents are busy. Following an increasing number of customer complaints toOfcom referring to such calls in the UK — which reached 9,000 in 2010 — theregulators revealed that Parliament had approved an increase in the maximumfine handed out to repeat offenders of silent calls and other culprits thatbroach regulations on abandoned and silent calls, to £2m. Since Ofcom’sannouncement, the regulator has fined a number of businesses that werefound to be making such calls, including Barclaycard, which was fined £50,000,and HomeServe, which was fined £750,000, for excessively abandoning callsand non-compliance of rules governing outbound telemarketing calls.

The rising number of silent and abandoned calls is thought to be down to theuse of automated dialling systems, which detect when a call has been putthrough to a customer’s answering machine and subsequently disconnect thecall. Although current rules outlined by Ofcom stipulate that abandoned callrates should represent no more than 3% of live calls per campaign and that anautomated message should be in place in the case where a live operator is notready to take a call, a significant proportion of customers are still receiving suchcalls, with more than 70% of those that complained to Ofcom in 2010/2011revealing that they had received two or more silent calls in the same day fromthe same company. However, as of yet, Ofcom has not announced a completeban on automated dialling systems, although companies that utilise suchtechnology have been advised to do so more carefully.

Amendments Made to the Privacy and Electronic CommunicationsDirective

In May 2011, the European Commission (EC) revealed that new regulationsamending some rules included in the Privacy and Electronic CommunicationsRegulations (PECR) 2003 would be implemented. These amendments wereintroduced in order to address privacy issues surrounding the use of Internetcookies by companies and Internet advertisers, which store data on customersvisiting websites and the customers’ use of the Internet while online. It alsostipulated that public electronic communications service providers would needto report personal data breaches and grant greater powers to the InformationCommissioner’s Office (ICO) in dealing with perpetrators of regulationsgoverning privacy and electronic communications.

Contact Centres PEST Analysis


The amendments to regulations regarding cookies ascertains that any websitethat wishes to use a customer’s cookies should provide clear andcomprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of or access tosuch information and must be granted consent by the user. The newregulations also stipulate that public electronic communications servicesproviders should notify the ICO immediately of any personal data breach,which is defined as:

“A breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawfuldestruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, oraccess to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwiseprocessed in connection with the provisions of a publicelectronic communications service.”

Under these new rules, the ICO was also given powers to impose civil monetarypenalties of up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the PECR. The ICO can auditthe measures taken by a provider of public electronic communications services(a service provider) in order to safeguard the security of that service and ensurecomplicity with the new personal data breach notification and recordingrequirements. The ICO can also impose a fixed monetary penalty of £1,000 ona service provider that fails to comply with the new breach notificationrequirements and can force a communications provider to hand overinformation needed to investigate compliance of the PECR.

Citizens Advice Recommends Ban on PPI Cold Calling

In November 2012, consumer help group Citizens Advice issued arecommendation that claims-management firms should be banned frommaking cold calls to customers regarding Payment Protection Insurance (PPI),which have continued to increase since banks were first told to pay back victimsof mis-sold PPI in 2006/2007. According to a survey undertaken by CitizensAdvice in 2012, nine out of every ten people were found to have beencontacted by claims management firms regarding PPI in 2011, with around 62%of people revealing that they had been ‘pestered’ by calls, e-mails and spamtexts from such companies — 72% of which telephoned regarding PPI claims.Citizens Advice also recommended that customers go straight to their bank ifthey feel that they have been mis-sold PPI in the past, rather than use a claimsmanagement firm, after the consumer advice group found that suchcompanies take around 25% of a successful PPI claim in charges, equating toapproximately £1,100 of a customer’s payout. Citizens Advice also urged theFinancial Services Authority (FSA), which regulates banks and financial servicesproviders, to introduce ‘tougher measures’ in order to protect consumers from‘predatory’ claims management firms.



ECONOMIC

General Economic Trends

In recent years, ongoing fluctuations in gross domestic product (GDP) have hada significant effect on capital expenditure invested by businesses in the UK,with recession occurring in 2008/2009 and, again, in the first quarter of 2012.Although this has served to persuade a number of companies using overseasoutsourcers to transfer operations back in house and to move offices todomestic locations, it has also resulted in reduced attrition rates as a greaternumber of staff look to hold onto their jobs in the face of continued economicconstraints. Skills CFA estimated that staff attrition rates in contact centres fellto 14% in 2009 — at the height of the UK’s first recession — from a high ofover 30% in 2004/2005.

Following the 2008/2009 recession, the contact centres market continued toexperience growth, with a number of acquisitions and consolidation takingplace, while confidence in outsourcing has once again strengthened.Nevertheless, the return to recession in Q1 2012 is likely to have had an effecton investment within call centres and, although the country was thought tohave exited recession in Q3 2012, the ongoing debt crisis currently beingexperienced across the Eurozone — which fell back into recession in the thirdquarter of 2012 — is expected to continue to put pressure on budgets.According to a report undertaken by Frost & Sullivan in 2012, the contactcentres market across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) observedrelatively low growth in 2011 compared with other global regions, with thistrend expected to continue over the next 5 years.

The ongoing financial troubles affecting Europe have also heightened theimportance of providing quality customer care and, as a result, manycompanies have begun to seek input from third-party outsourcers withspecialist expertise in this particular area. However, businesses are likely to takea more measured approach towards using outsourcers, with many preferringthe security and control over quality that in-house operations often provide.

Table 9.1: UK Economic Trends (000, £m, %, million and £),2007-2011

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Resident PopulationEstimates (000),Mid-Years

Female 31,068 31,244 31,418 31,619 31,833

Male 29,918 30,154 30,374 30,643 30,902

Table continues...




...table continued

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Total population 60,986 61,398 61,792 62,262 62,735

% changeyear-on-year - 0.7 0.6 0.8 0.8

Gross DomesticProduct (£m)

Current prices 1,412,119 1,440,931 1,401,863 1,466,569 1,519,134

% changeyear-on-year - 2.0 -2.7 4.6 3.6

Annual chain-linkedGDP 1,474,153 1,459,885 1,401,863 1,427,087 1,439,536

% changeyear-on-year - -1.0 -4.0 1.8 0.9

Rate of Inflation (%)

Inflation 4.3 4.0 -0.5 4.6 5.2

Percentage pointchangeyear-on-year - -0.3 -4.5 5.1 0.6

Actual Number ofUnemployed Personsin the UK (million)

Actual number ofclaimants 0.86 0.91 1.53 1.50 1.53

% changeyear-on-year - 5.8 68.1 -2.0 2.0

Table continues...




...table continued

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Household DisposableIncome Per Capita (£)

Householddisposable income 14,305 14,733 15,109 15,619 15,976

% changeyear-on-year - 3.0 2.6 3.4 2.3

GDP — gross domestic product

Note: inflation is at retail price index (RPI); inflation data shown are annual averagechanges; claimant count measures the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Source: Population Estimates for UK, England and Wales, Scotland and NorthernIreland — Population Estimates Timeseries 1971 to Current Year, December 2011/National Population Projections, 2010-based projections/United KingdomEconomic Accounts, November 2012/Consumer Price Indices, November 2012/Labour Market Statistics, August 2012, National Statistics website © Crowncopyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO(and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland)

SOCIAL

ICO Fines Spam Text Message Culprits Up To £500,000

In October 2012, the ICO revealed that it would be fining two people believedto be responsible for sending out millions of spam text messages regardingaccident compensation fees of up to £500,000, following a heightenedcrackdown on unsolicited telemarketing text messages and misuse of people’spersonal details. A further eight companies were also thought to be underinvestigation by the ICO, which was given extra powers in early 2012 to meteout fines of up to £500,000 to those who were found to breach the PECR. Someof the abuses that the culprits were thought to be guilty of included the factthat no named sender was given on the texts and that when a recipient texted‘STOP’ in order to be taken off a telemarketing list, they were simply added toa new list, which was then sold on to other telemarketing firms.



In November 2012, the ICO revealed that it had handed out its first fine underthe amendments made to the PECR giving it extra powers to fine those thatbreached the regulations, after requesting Tetrus Telecoms, a marketing firmthat sent out large amounts of unsolicited spam texts, pay a fee of £440,000.The fine was handed out following an 18-month investigation into theactivities of Tetrus Telecoms after the ICO received complaints that thecompany was sending out large volumes of spam texts from its offices inStockport and Birmingham, without the prior consent of recipients andwithout identifying the sender.

Since the amendments to the PECR were introduced in early 2012, when theICO began asking people to send in examples of spam texts that they hadreceived, the ICO revealed that it had been sent nearly 30,000 examples. It isthought that the new fines handed out by the ICO will pave the way for othersimilar cases in the future.

Call Centres Found to Be Taking Advantage of Low-Paid PrisonWorkers

In August 2012, it was revealed that a solar energy company Becoming Greenhad taken on 23 prisoners from minimum-security prison HMP Presoed in SouthWales as contact centre employees. However, the company was found to bepaying prisoners only £3 a day to work in its call centre, although the firmpointed out that this was part of the inmates’ ‘work experience’ at BecomingGreen, for which they were paid at a rate of 40 pence (p) per hour for at least2 months in the company’s telesales division, which is based in Cardiff.Following an agreement between the solar panel firm and the nearby prison,the company took on 23 prisoners as staff, of whom 12 are currently being paidaround 6% of the minimum wage. Becoming Green came under further firewhen it was revealed that it had sacked a number of other workers since itbegan to use prisoners as employees, who now account for around 15% to17% of the company’s workforce. The firm was quick to announce that thesackings were part of the ‘normal call-centre environment’ and that it hadtaken on new staff from the prison as part of a new expansion strategy.

In early 2012, former Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke revealed that anexpansion of mainly manufacturing work would occur inside prisons, althoughthe policy was implemented with care, following concerns voiced by unionsthat prison workers would be putting others out of work. This formed part ofClarke’s wider initiative to increase the number of prison workers from 10,000to 20,000 over the next 10 years.



TECHNOLOGICAL

Popularity of the Multichannel Contact Centre Continues to Grow

The popularity of social media and the continued uptake of smartphones inrecent years has led to the development of new multichannel contact centrestrategies that allow agents to reach customers (or vice versa) using a range ofdifferent communications channels that incorporate these new trends. Manycompanies now use e-mail, web chat, social media and short messaging service(SMS) alongside traditional telephone channels for both inbound andoutbound customer communications.

The increasing number of people that now own a smartphone — estimated tobe nearing 50% according to Google Mobile Ads Blog as of January 2012 —has also resulted in a rising number of contact centres opting to diversify intothe management of mobile applications (apps) in order to suit customers’ newcommunications habits. According to Dimension Data’s Contact CentreBenchmarking Report, 2012, which surveyed 637 contact centres from 72countries across the world, 19.2% of contact centres are now managingsmartphone apps. Further data from the report revealed that 33.2% ofbusinesses were supporting social media channels — double the 18.6% foundto be doing so in 2011. On top of this, 14.4% of businesses that were surveyedexpected to install the capability to support social media within the next12 months, while 10.4% planned to be able to support the channel within thenext 24 months. The benefits of social media within a company’s publicrelations (PR) and communications strategy has been reflected by the successof business models, such as that employed by mobile virtual network operator(MVNO) giffgaff, which is run entirely online and by its own customers in returnfor discounted deals and freebies.

Despite this, the majority of contact centres still communicate with customersusing telephony services, with 98.5% doing so in 2012, according to datacompiled by Dimension Data. Meanwhile, 89.1% of businesses surveyedutilised e-mail as a communication channel and 66.3% used self-service(touchtone) telephony services; 36.3% used text messages and nearly a third(29.4%) used web chat.

Table 9.2: Communications Channels Utilised by UK ContactCentres (% of respondents), 2012

Telephone 98.5

E-mail 89.1

Internet 69.3

IVR (touchtone) self-service 66.3

Table continues...



Table 9.2: Communications Channels Utilised by UK ContactCentres (% of respondents), 2012

...table continued

SMS (text messaging) 36.3

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) 33.1

Web chat 29.4

Smartphone application services 19.2

Speech self-service 19.2

IVR — interactive voice response

SMS — short messaging service

Source: Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2012 © Dimension Data

Figure 9.1: Communications Channels Utilised by UK ContactCentres (% of respondents), 2012

Telephone

E-mail

Internet

IVR (touchtone) self-service

SMS (text m

essaging)Social m

edia (Facebook, etc.)

Web chat

Smartphone app services

Speech self-service

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

app — application

Source: Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2012 © Dimension Data/Key Note



These results indicate the increasing importance of multichannel strategieswithin contact centres, with increasingly more customers preferring tocommunicate via social media and the Internet using their mobile phone. Thisis likely to drive demand for staff that are comfortable using a variety ofdifferent communications channels and will require increasing investmentfrom organisations that wish to expand in terms of customer service. Despitethis, only 6.7% of organisations were found to agree that their contact centreswere highly advanced in terms of service channel capabilities, according toDimension Data, suggesting that companies are struggling to stay ahead ofthe technological advances in the industry.

Virtual Contact Centres

In recent years, much has been made about the variety of benefits provided byoperating a ‘virtual’ contact centre model, which allows staff to work fromhome or at a variety of locations spread across a wide geographical area.Benefits of this particular model include the provision of more flexible openinghours — including nights — and can often help to drive down staff attritionrates — which are often notoriously high within contact centres — by providinggreater work satisfaction and allowing staff to set their own hours withincertain parameters. The operation of a virtual contact centre can also help toreduce costs involved in setting up and running an office, as the majority ofemployees either work from home or in small offices. It can also helporganisations to recruit specialists that might not otherwise have beenavailable due to their location.

A recent survey undertaken by Jabra in conjunction with Frost & Sullivan inDecember 2011 revealed that 84% of contact centre managers in charge oflarge businesses viewed the emergence of employing remote agents as thenext big trend within the industry. Nearly eight out of every ten respondentsalso cited one of the advantages of using a ‘virtual’ model as being able toemploy qualified personnel from different locations throughout the countryand even in different time zones. Furthermore, 68% of contact centremanagers revealed that they believed that employing remote agents wouldemerge as a future trend within the market. Larger contact centres (with morethan 500 seats) were more likely to consider using a virtual model, with 84%revealing this to be the case, compared with 69% of medium-sized enterprises(with between 100 and 500 seats) and 46% of small contact centres (with fewerthan 100 seats). However, disadvantages of utilising a virtual model were alsoanalysed, with a large majority (96%) citing the lack of everyday face-to-facecommunication with employees as a particular problem, while 70% stated thatslow Internet connections could also be a possible weakness.



Rollout of 4G and Superfast Broadband in the UK to Boost InternetProtocol Telephony

In 2010, the UK Government announced that it would be allocating £530mduring its current Spending Review period to drive commercial investment inthe rollout of high-speed broadband in rural communities across the UK, withthe aim of having the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015and delivering superfast broadband to at least 90% of premises in the UK. TheGovernment has since invested a further £150m into developing a number of‘super-connected cities’ across the UK, including Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds,Bradford, Newcastle and Manchester, along with the nation’s four capitalcities, which will involve the installation of ultrafast fixed broadband accessand create large areas of public wireless connectivity. On top of this, £150m incapital expenditure will also be invested by the Government in improvingmobile coverage and quality where existing coverage is poor or non-existent,with this particular project set for completion in 2015; businesses andconsumers should begin to see improvements in service from early 2013.

Recent months have also seen a number of mobile operators based in the UK,along with the communications regulator Ofcom, draw up a timetable for therollout of 4G, the fourth generation of mobile communications standards.While new mobile network operator Everything Everywhere (EE) — whichoperates under the T-Mobile, EE and Orange brands — has already begun torollout 4G to its customers based in the UK, other operators such as Three, O2and Vodafone will have to wait until spring 2013 to launch their own 4G dataservice. The introduction of 4G mobile technology is expected to benefitconsumers by providing more improved and reliable network speeds.

Both the rollout of high-speed broadband and 4G mobile networks across theUK should help to boost the uptake of Internet Protocol (IP) telephony acrossthe contact centres market over the next few years — a trend that has alreadybecome emergent in recent years. It is also likely to increase demand formultichannel contact centres, as it is expected to boost the number ofcustomers using the Internet and web-based services to contact customerservices. The rollout of 4G is likely to result in greater uptake of smartphonesin the UK — which is already thought to be nearing 50%, according to an articlepublished by Google Mobile Ads Blog in January 2012 — driving demand formobile-based applications utilised within contact centres, as part of theirmultichannel communications strategy.



10. Consumer Dynamics

INTRODUCTION

In November 2012, Key Note commissioned NEMS Market Research toundertake a consumer survey in order to investigate consumer attitudes andopinions regarding contact centres in the UK. Respondents were given a list ofstatements pertaining to their experience of contact centres (includingtelesales/telemarketing calls), which they then had to agree or disagree with.The survey was conducted using a sample of 1,000 men and women, all aged16 and above.

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

The majority of respondents still preferred to use more traditional means whencontacting an organisation, with more than two-thirds (71.6%) revealing thatthey used the telephone to do so and 43.9% visiting a main or local officebranch. However, e-mail was also popular, with more than half (57.6%) ofrespondents using e-mail or click-throughs from websites to contact customerservices, while 27.5% did so via letter or fax and only 15.1% used instantmessenger (IM) or social media.

Traditional communications channels were generally more favoured amongolder consumers, with nearly 9 in every 10 individuals aged 65 and overpreferring to use the telephone to contact an organisation (86.4%), while54.6% of those aged 55 to 64 years old opted to visit a main or local office tomake enquires. In contrast, younger consumers preferred to use Internetcommunications, with 88.5% of those aged 16 to 19 years old opting to makeenquiries via e-mail or website click-throughs, while 26.1% of those agedbetween 20 and 24 preferred IM or social media channels to contact anorganisation. Interestingly, communicating via letter/fax had relatively highpenetrations among both younger and older age groups, with 32.9% of thoseaged 16 to 19 years old opting for this method, along with 39% of those aged65 and over.

Those in higher social grades (A, B and C1) were most likely to use Internetcommunications channels, such as e-mail and website click-throughs, whilethose in social grades C2, D and E favoured more traditional channels such asthe telephone, visiting a main or local office branch and using letter/fax.

Contact Centres Consumer Dynamics


Table 10.1: Preferred Method Used to Contact an Organisation(% of respondents), November 2012

Tele

ph

on

e

E-m

ail/C

lick-Th

rou

gh

Main

/Bra

nch

Office

Lette

r/Fax

Insta

nt M

esse

ng

er/

So

cial M

ed

ia

All adults 71.6 57.6 43.9 27.5 15.1

Sex

Male 66.8 61.4 46.1 24.7 15.6

Female 75.8 54.2 42.0 30.1 14.5

Age

16-19 63.2 88.5 26.4 32.9 25.3

20-24 75.8 78.9 54.8 24.7 26.1

25-34 60.4 74.6 40.9 25.4 22.1

35-44 63.1 63.9 37.3 15.4 19.8

45-54 72.0 57.9 42.1 24.1 8.8

55-64 76.7 46.9 54.6 33.8 8.1

65+ 86.4 23.9 48.0 39.0 5.9

Social Grade

A 69.7 60.0 44.1 16.9 23.0

B 71.9 65.9 40.5 29.3 16.3

C1 66.7 68.9 42.9 27.9 12.4

C2 72.2 54.9 46.5 27.0 16.2

D 74.6 42.2 45.3 31.1 16.4

E 81.1 36.8 42.5 25.7 13.3

Note: rows may sum to more than 100 as respondents may use more than one channelof communication to contact an organisation.

Weighted sample: 1,000

Base: all adults aged 16+

Source: Key Note



Telephone

Respondents that preferred to communicate with a contact centre viatelephone were more likely to be female (75.8%); aged 65 and over (86.4%);in social grade E (81.1%); and not working (retired/invalid [87.5%]). They alsotended to live in Wales (87.7%); live in three-person households (78.9%); bedivorced (86.5%); have no children (75.3%); and own their own home outright(79.2%).

In comparison, those least likely to contact an organisation via the telephonetended to be younger, belong to a higher social grade and work full time(62.7%). They were also more likely to live in larger households and be marriedor living as married with young children, suggesting that families weregenerally more in favour of alternative methods of communication other thanthe telephone.

Table 10.2: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Telephone (% of respondents), November 2012

Sample

Profile (%) PP% Pen %

All adults 100.0 100.0 71.6

Sex

Male 47.5 44.3 66.8

Female 52.5 55.7 75.8

Age

16-19 6.3 5.6 63.2

20-24 8.8 9.3 75.8

25-34 17.5 14.8 60.4

35-44 18.4 16.2 63.1

45-54 16.3 16.4 72.0

55-64 13.1 14.0 76.7

65+ 19.6 23.7 86.4

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.0 69.7

B 14.2 14.3 71.9

C1 30.2 28.2 66.7

C2 30.0 30.2 72.2

D 11.2 11.7 74.6

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Social Grade (cont.)

E 10.3 11.7 81.1

Working Status

Full time (30+ hours a week) 43.8 38.4 62.7

Part time 16.5 16.6 72.2

Not working (excluding retired/invalid)† 16.6 16.9 73.0

Not working (retired/invalid) 22.6 27.7 87.5

Standard Region

North 3.3 3.7 78.4

Yorkshire and Humberside 9.4 8.8 66.8

East Midlands 3.6 3.7 72.7

West Midlands 7.5 8.8 84.5

East Anglia 9.8 10.5 76.3

South East 20.1 18.8 66.7

Greater London 9.5 9.3 70.4

South West 10.6 9.7 65.2

North West 11.9 12.1 72.7

Wales 4.7 5.8 87.7

Scotland 9.4 8.9 67.6

Size of Household

One person 22.4 24.1 76.7

Two person 30.1 30.0 71.3

Three person 19.7 21.8 78.9

Four person 19.3 16.0 59.2

Five person or more 7.7 7.3 67.9

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Marital Status

Married/living as married 53.2 51.6 69.4

Single 29.6 28.6 69.2

Divorced 5.9 7.1 86.5

Widowed 9.1 10.6 83.8

Separated 1.6 1.6 68.9

Presence of Children

Aged 0-4 10.8 8.1 53.5

Aged 5-9 10.5 8.7 59.7

Aged 10-15 13.4 12.7 67.9

No children 72.9 76.7 75.3

Tenure

Own home outright 38.6 42.7 79.2

Buying home 35.5 30.6 61.8

Rent from the council 12.0 12.3 73.4

Rent privately 10.1 10.5 74.4

Rent-free occupancy 1.6 1.2 53.8

PP — purchasing profile

Pen — penetration

† — e.g. studying, not looking for work or unemployed



Source: Key Note



E-mail and Website Click-Throughs

Over half (57.6%) of respondents were found to prefer online contact channelssuch as e-mail and/or website click-throughs. Men were more likely to favourthis option than women, at 61.4% compared with 54.2%, as were thosebelonging to younger age groups and higher social grades. Respondentsworking full time were also found to be more likely to use e-mail orclick-throughs as a method of communication when contacting customerservices, with 68.9% using this particular channel; as were those living in theSouth West (65.1%). Other demographics to show a preference for e-mail/click-throughs when making enquiries included respondents living infour-person households (75.9%), those that were separated (70.8%),respondents with children aged 5 to 9 years old (73.4%) and those in theprocess of buying their own home (65.2%).

In contrast, respondents belonging to older age groups, lower social grades,as well as those that were not working (retired/invalid) were generally foundto have the lowest level of penetrations for using e-mail and/or websiteclick-throughs to contact organisations. This could be down to respondentsthat belong to these particular demographics being less adept at usingInternet-based communication channels and having poorer access to anInternet-connected computer and/or other mobile devices, such as a tabletcomputer or smartphone.

Table 10.3: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by E-mail or by Clicking Through from Their Website

(% of respondents), November 2012

Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 57.6

Sex

Male 47.5 50.6 61.4

Female 52.5 49.4 54.2

Age

16-19 6.3 9.7 88.5

20-24 8.8 12.1 78.9

25-34 17.5 22.7 74.6

35-44 18.4 20.4 63.9

45-54 16.3 16.4 57.9

55-64 13.1 10.6 46.9

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Age (cont.)

65+ 19.6 8.1 23.9

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.2 60.0

B 14.2 16.3 65.9

C1 30.2 36.1 68.9

C2 30.0 28.6 54.9

D 11.2 8.2 42.2

E 10.3 6.6 36.8

Working Status


Part time 16.5 18.3 64.0



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.1 52.7





South East 20.1 22.1 63.1


South West 10.6 12.0 65.1

North West 11.9 11.2 54.1

Wales 4.7 4.3 52.1

Scotland 9.4 9.0 54.7

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Size of Household

One person 22.4 15.6 40.2

Two person 30.1 27.7 52.9


Four person 19.3 25.5 75.9


Marital Status


Single 29.6 34.6 67.3

Divorced 5.9 3.8 37.2

Widowed 9.1 3.9 24.7



Aged 0-4 10.8 12.7 67.8

Aged 5-9 10.5 13.4 73.4

Aged 10-15 13.4 15.1 65.0

No children 72.9 68.9 54.4

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 40.2 65.2





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Visiting a Main or Branch Office

Visiting a main or branch office in order to make enquiries at an organisationwas most popular among men (46.1%); older consumers, especially those aged55 to 64 years old (54.6%); those belonging to social grade C2 (46.5%);respondents not working that were retired/invalid (48.7%); those living in theNorth (53.1%); respondents living in small households with just one person(48.6%); those that were separated (65.4%); respondents without any children(45.2%); and those that owned their own home outright (47.9%).



Table 10.4: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto do so by Going into a Main or Branch Office

Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 43.9

Sex

Male 47.5 49.8 46.1

Female 52.5 50.2 42.0

Age

16-19 6.3 3.8 26.4

20-24 8.8 11.0 54.8

25-34 17.5 16.3 40.9

35-44 18.4 15.6 37.3

45-54 16.3 15.6 42.1

55-64 13.1 16.3 54.6

65+ 19.6 21.4 48.0

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.1 44.1

B 14.2 13.1 40.5

C1 30.2 29.5 42.9

C2 30.0 31.7 46.5

D 11.2 11.6 45.3

E 10.3 10.0 42.5

Working Status


Part time 16.5 14.4 38.3



Standard Region

North 3.3 4.0 53.1





Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Standard Region (cont.)

South East 20.1 23.9 52.2


South West 10.6 8.0 33.0

North West 11.9 12.0 44.2

Wales 4.7 5.5 51.5

Scotland 9.4 9.5 44.3

Size of Household

One person 22.4 24.8 48.6

Two person 30.1 30.5 44.5


Four person 19.3 14.9 33.8


Marital Status


Single 29.6 28.0 41.5

Divorced 5.9 6.0 44.5

Widowed 9.1 9.5 46.1



Aged 0-4 10.8 10.1 41.0

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.5 44.2

Aged 10-15 13.4 12.0 39.4

No children 72.9 75.0 45.2

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 29.2 36.2





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Letter or Fax

Respondents that preferred to contact an organisation via letter or fax weremore likely to be female (30.1%); aged 65 and over (39%); in social grade D(31.1%); not working (retired/invalid [37.8%)]); living in the South East(35.6%); residing in one-person households (31.9%); widowed (36.3%); haveno children (28.8%); and own their own home outright (32.6%).

Table 10.5: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Letter or Fax (% of respondents), November 2012

Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 27.5

Sex

Male 47.5 42.6 24.7

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Sex (cont.)

Female 52.5 57.4 30.1

Age

16-19 6.3 7.5 32.9

20-24 8.8 7.9 24.7

25-34 17.5 16.2 25.4

35-44 18.4 10.2 15.4

45-54 16.3 14.3 24.1

55-64 13.1 16.1 33.8

65+ 19.6 27.8 39.0

Social Grade

A 4.1 2.5 16.9

B 14.2 15.1 29.3

C1 30.2 30.6 27.9

C2 30.0 29.4 27.0

D 11.2 12.7 31.1

E 10.3 9.7 25.7

Working Status


Part time 16.5 16.6 27.7



Standard Region

North 3.3 2.8 22.7





South East 20.1 26.0 35.6

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample




South West 10.6 10.3 26.7

North West 11.9 12.4 28.6

Wales 4.7 5.1 29.8

Scotland 9.4 8.9 26.0

Size of Household

One person 22.4 26.0 31.9

Two person 30.1 28.1 25.6


Four person 19.3 19.5 27.8


Marital Status


Single 29.6 28.3 26.4

Divorced 5.9 5.2 24.3

Widowed 9.1 12.0 36.3



Aged 0-4 10.8 9.3 23.8

Aged 5-9 10.5 9.0 23.7

Aged 10-15 13.4 12.1 24.9

No children 72.9 76.4 28.8

Table continues...




...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 24.7 19.2





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Instant Messenger/Social Media

In recent years, a greater number of contact centres have expanded theircommunications strategy to include a variety of new channels, such as IM andsocial media networks, including Facebook and Twitter. Although only 15.1%of respondents had used these types of channels to contact an organisation, itis likely that this figure will continue to grow in the future, as more companieschoose to adopt IM and social media channels as communications lines.Generally, IM and social media communications channels were found to havea greater prevalence among those belonging to younger age groups andrespondents that were not working (excluding those that were retired orinvalid), which often includes students. Respondents in social grade A alsoregistered a high penetration, at 23%, as those belonging to this particulardemographic are generally more likely to have access to an Internet-connectedcomputer or other device. Others to favour IM and social media includedrespondents in two-person households (18.2%) and those with children aged0 to 4 years old (20%), indicating greater prevalence among young families.However, respondents that were single (22.1%) and separated (25.5%) alsoregistered high penetrations, as did those that lived in privately rentedaccommodation (29.3%).



Table 10.6: When I Need to Contact an Organisation, I Preferto Do So by Instant Messenger/Social Media


Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 15.1

Sex

Male 47.5 49.3 15.6

Female 52.5 50.7 14.5

Age

16-19 6.3 10.6 25.3

20-24 8.8 15.3 26.1

25-34 17.5 25.8 22.1

35-44 18.4 24.1 19.8

45-54 16.3 9.5 8.8

55-64 13.1 7.1 8.1

65+ 19.6 7.7 5.9

Social Grade

A 4.1 6.2 23.0

B 14.2 15.4 16.3

C1 30.2 24.9 12.4

C2 30.0 32.2 16.2

D 11.2 12.2 16.4

E 10.3 9.1 13.3

Working Status


Part time 16.5 15.9 14.5



Standard Region

North 3.3 2.2 9.9




Table continues...





...table continued

Sample




South East 20.1 22.6 16.9


South West 10.6 8.4 11.9

North West 11.9 15.6 19.7

Wales 4.7 6.4 20.4

Scotland 9.4 10.5 16.8

Size of Household

One person 22.4 15.6 10.5

Two person 30.1 36.4 18.2


Four person 19.3 22.2 17.3


Marital Status


Single 29.6 43.3 22.1

Divorced 5.9 3.8 9.7

Widowed 9.1 2.5 4.2



Aged 0-4 10.8 14.4 20.0

Aged 5-9 10.5 11.0 15.8

Aged 10-15 13.4 14.7 16.6

No children 72.9 67.2 13.9

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 38.8 16.5





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Demand for Flexible Communication Channels

The vast majority of people questioned revealed that they liked to choose theway in which they contacted an organisation depending on the circumstances,with 92.6% of respondents agreeing with this statement, indicating a demandfor a wide range of communications channels. Penetration was higher amongwomen than men, at 93.1% compared with 92%, and among older age groups,particularly those aged between 45 and 64 years old.

A general downwards trend was observed alongside social grade, with all ofthose belonging to grade A agreeing with the statement, compared with78.2% of those in grade E. Furthermore, respondents in work (both part timeand full time) were more likely to demand flexibility when contacting anorganisation, compared with those not working (including retired/invalid andthose that were out of work, e.g. students, unemployed, etc.).



Regionally, respondents living in the West Midlands and Greater London weremost likely to agree that they liked to be able to choose the way in which theycontacted an organisation, with a penetration of 95.4% each; while thoseliving in the North West were the least concerned regarding this matter(88.2%). Other demographics to observe high penetrations includedrespondents living in three-person households (96.1%); those that wereseparated (100%); those with children aged 10 to 15 years old (96.9%); andrespondents that were in the process of buying their own home (94.6%).

Table 10.7: I Like to Be Able to Choose the Way I Contactan Organisation, According to the Circumstances


Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 92.6

Sex

Male 47.5 47.2 92.0

Female 52.5 52.8 93.1

Age

16-19 6.3 5.2 76.8

20-24 8.8 8.9 93.7

25-34 17.5 17.4 91.9

35-44 18.4 19.0 95.9

45-54 16.3 17.0 96.8

55-64 13.1 13.7 96.9

65+ 19.6 18.7 88.2

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.4 100.0

B 14.2 15.2 99.0

C1 30.2 30.4 93.2

C2 30.0 30.7 94.9

D 11.2 10.5 87.1

E 10.3 8.7 78.2

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Working Status


Part time 16.5 17.0 95.2



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.4 94.0





South East 20.1 20.0 92.1


South West 10.6 10.6 92.4

North West 11.9 11.4 88.2

Wales 4.7 4.8 93.6

Scotland 9.4 9.6 94.3

Size of Household

One person 22.4 22.4 92.3

Two person 30.1 30.8 94.5


Four person 19.3 18.4 88.1


Marital Status


Single 29.6 29.4 91.9

Divorced 5.9 5.8 90.1

Widowed 9.1 8.6 87.3

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Marital Status (cont.)

Separated 1.6 1.7 100.0


Aged 0-4 10.8 10.0 85.8

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.1 88.9

Aged 10-15 13.4 14.0 96.9

No children 72.9 73.1 92.9

Tenure


Buying home 35.5 36.2 94.6





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

PROBLEMS WITH AUTOMATED TELEPHONE SERVICES

Demand to Speak to Real Person Still High

Nearly all respondents questioned revealed that they would prefer to speak toa real person rather than an automated answering service when attemptingto contact an organisation, with 94.3% agreeing that this was the case.Penetration was higher among women than men, at 96.8% compared with91.5%; while, in terms of age, those that were 45 to 64 years old were foundto place much higher importance on speaking to a live person whentelephoning a contact centre.



By social grade, respondents belonging to grade D registered the highestpenetration (96.9%), while those in grade B reported the lowest (89.2%). Interms of working status, those that were not working (excluding those thatwere retired/invalid) were the most likely to agree with the statement (99.3%),as were those living East Anglia and Wales — where all respondents werefound to concur. Other demographics to register high penetrations includedrespondents living in households of five or more people (98%); those that wereseparated (100%); respondents that had no children (95.3%); and those livingin privately rented accommodation (99.6%).

Table 10.8: When I Telephone an Organisation I Would RatherSpeak to a Real Person Than to an Automated Answering

Service (% of respondents), November 2012

Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 94.3

Sex

Male 47.5 46.1 91.5

Female 52.5 53.9 96.8

Age

16-19 6.3 6.4 96.1

20-24 8.8 8.5 90.7

25-34 17.5 17.1 92.2

35-44 18.4 18.1 93.0

45-54 16.3 16.8 97.3

55-64 13.1 13.6 97.7

65+ 19.6 19.5 93.7

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.0 92.0

B 14.2 13.5 89.2

C1 30.2 30.3 94.5

C2 30.0 30.6 96.4

D 11.2 11.5 96.9

E 10.3 10.2 92.9

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Working Status


Part time 16.5 17.1 97.5



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.5 97.6




East Anglia 9.8 10.4 100.0

South East 20.1 21.1 99.0


South West 10.6 10.6 93.9

North West 11.9 11.2 88.9

Wales 4.7 5.0 100.0

Scotland 9.4 9.6 95.4

Size of Household

One person 22.4 22.9 96.1

Two person 30.1 29.9 93.4


Four person 19.3 18.8 91.6


Marital Status


Single 29.6 29.9 95.4

Divorced 5.9 5.8 92.5

Widowed 9.1 9.0 93.9

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample



Separated 1.6 1.7 100.0


Aged 0-4 10.8 10.5 91.9

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.2 91.4

Aged 10-15 13.4 13.1 92.1

No children 72.9 73.7 95.3

Tenure


Buying home 35.5 34.7 92.4





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Between 2002 and 2007, a noticeable upwards trend was observed in theproportion of respondents preferring to speak to a real person rather than anautomated answering machine, with penetration rising from 73% to 98.1%over this 5-year period. Since then, however, a decline has been observed inthe number of people agreeing with this statement, after penetration droppedto 97.4% in 2009 before falling slightly further to 94.3% in 2012. This couldindicate that customers are becoming more used to navigating aroundself-service automated systems in contact centres, with many organisationsimplementing this type of technology in the hope of reducing call waitingtimes and call volume. Nevertheless, the proportion of people that still prefertalking to a live agent is extremely high.



Penetration also fell slightly among both men and women over the past fewyears, standing at 91.5% and 96.8%, respectively, in 2012. Noticeable declinesin penetration were observed among younger age groups since 2007; whilemore incremental decreases were reported among older age groups, withthose aged 55 to 64 even witnessing a small increase to 97.7% in 2012, from97.5% in 2009.

The high penetrations observed across the gender and age demographicsdisplayed in Table 10.9 indicate that the majority of people would still preferto speak to a live agent in comparison with an automated answering service,with this particular issue becoming increasingly important in recent years,following a rising number of organisations installing automated machines andself-service options within their contact centres. This suggests that contactcentres still have a long way to go in achieving the correct mix of self-serviceand live agent interaction within their businesses; or that they should look atthe possibility of installing more sophisticated automated answering services.


Service (% of respondents), 2002-2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012

2002 2003 2004 2005 2007 2009 2012

All adults 73.0 58.0 79.0 87.0 98.1 97.4 94.3

Sex

Male 70.0 57.0 76.0 88.0 98.7 97.9 91.5

Female 76.0 58.0 82.0 87.0 97.5 97.0 96.8

Age

15-24 69.0 52.0 73.0 †90.0 n.a. n.a. n.a.

16-19 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 100.0 97.4 96.1

20-24 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 98.9 100.0 90.7

25-34 69.0 59.0 71.0 89.0 100.0 95.5 92.2

Table continues...




Service (% of respondents), 2002-2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012

...table continued

2002 2003 2004 2005 2007 2009 2012

Age (cont.)

35-44 75.0 53.0 77.0 85.0 97.3 98.2 93.0

45-54 84.0 62.0 83.0 88.0 97.4 97.8 97.3

55-64 72.0 63.0 87.0 86.0 99.7 97.5 97.7

65+ 70.0 58.0 83.0 85.0 95.8 97.0 93.7

n.a. — not available

† — 16-24 in 2005

Weighted sample: 1,028 in 2002; 1,011 in 2003; 996 in 2004; 1,025 in 2005; 1,000 in 2007;1,000 in 2009; and 1,000 in 2012


Source: Key Note

Time Wasting

One of the biggest problems that customers have with the automatedtelephone answering systems used by contact centres is that they waste timewhile being transferred through self-service systems in order to be connectedto the correct person or department. While self-service systems can often savecall time and reduce call volumes for call centres, it can have the adverse effectfor customers.

Over four-fifths (85.6%) of respondents revealed that they felt usingautomated telephone answering systems often wasted time, with morewomen than men agreeing with this statement, at 87.9% compared with83.1%. Respondents aged 25 to 34 years old (94.1%) were the most likely tofeel like they wasted time using automated answering systems, as did those inhigher social grades and those that were either in full- or part-timeemployment.

In terms of region, those living in Greater London (89.6%) were the most likelyto feel like they had wasted time using self-service automated services; as wererespondents in three-person households (93.5%); those that were married/living as married (88%); respondents with children aged 0 to 4 years old(94.9%); and those that lived in privately rented accommodation or rent-freeoccupancy (92.4% each).



Table 10.10: I Waste Time Waiting for Automated TelephoneAnswering Systems to Connect Me to the Correct Person

or Department (% of respondents), November 2012

Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 85.6

Sex

Male 47.5 46.1 83.1

Female 52.5 53.9 87.9

Age

16-19 6.3 4.7 64.0

20-24 8.8 9.2 89.9

25-34 17.5 19.3 94.1

35-44 18.4 18.1 84.2

45-54 16.3 17.1 90.1

55-64 13.1 13.5 88.3

65+ 19.6 18.1 78.9

Social Grade

A 4.1 4.5 94.7

B 14.2 15.2 91.5

C1 30.2 30.0 85.0

C2 30.0 30.6 87.5

D 11.2 10.9 83.0

E 10.3 8.8 73.2

Working Status


Part time 16.5 18.1 93.8



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.2 82.5




Table continues...





...table continued

Sample




South East 20.1 19.9 84.7


South West 10.6 11.0 88.8

North West 11.9 11.8 84.9

Wales 4.7 4.8 87.7

Scotland 9.4 9.6 86.8

Size of Household

One person 22.4 21.5 82.1

Two person 30.1 30.6 87.0


Four person 19.3 17.9 79.2


Marital Status


Single 29.6 28.9 83.6

Divorced 5.9 5.9 85.8

Widowed 9.1 8.4 79.6



Aged 0-4 10.8 12.0 94.9

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.6 86.5

Aged 10-15 13.4 13.7 87.3

No children 72.9 71.6 84.1

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 34.7 83.9





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Similar to the trends observed in Table 10.9 — which showed the proportionof respondents that preferred talking to a live call centre agent rather than anautomated answering service — the proportion of people that felt they werewasting time when using an automated system was also high. Althoughpenetration fell in 2003 from 62% to 50%, it has since continued to climb,peaking at 91% in 2005. Since then, a drop in the proportion of people thatagreed with this statement was observed in 2007 and 2009, before levels beganto rise again slightly in 2012 to 85.6%, up from 83.6% in 2009.

Although the majority of age groups observed an increase in penetrationbetween 2009 and 2012, some actually reported a decline, including thoseaged 16 to 19 years old, those aged 35 to 44 years old and respondents aged55 years old and over, suggesting that some improvements may have begunto be made by companies investing in or upgrading self-service technologyover the past few years. Nevertheless, overall, penetration has remained high,indicating that much still needs to be done in order for automated answeringmachines to be successfully utilised by customers and to ensure that consumerneeds are met when using such systems.




or Department (% of respondents), 2002-2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012

2002 2003 2004 2005 2007 2009 2012

All adults 62.0 50.0 54.0 91.0 90.4 83.6 85.6

Sex

Male 60.0 49.0 49.0 90.0 91.3 79.7 83.1

Female 63.0 51.0 59.0 92.0 89.6 87.3 87.9

Age

15-24 51.0 44.0 35.0 †88.0 n.a. n.a. n.a.

16-19 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 87.2 70.1 64.0

20-24 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 85.2 83.2 89.9

25-34 64.0 51.0 51.0 89.0 90.9 78.0 94.1

35-44 70.0 54.0 54.0 92.0 90.9 89.6 84.2

45-54 68.0 56.0 65.0 95.0 93.3 89.5 90.1

55-64 66.0 52.0 63.0 95.0 94.6 89.9 88.3

65+ 52.0 46.0 56.0 85.0 87.9 78.9 78.9

n.a. — not available

† — 16-24 in 2005

Weighted sample: 1,028 in 2002; 1,011 in 2003; 996 in 2004; 1,025 in 2005; 1,000 in 2007;1,000 in 2009; and 1,000 in 2012


Source: Key Note

QUERIES AND COMPLAINTS HANDLING

Queries

Nearly four-fifths (78.2%) of respondents revealed queries made throughcontact centres were answered to their satisfaction, showing someimprovement from 2009 — the last year that the same survey was undertaken— when 75.7% agreed with the same statement. Men were more likely to haveexperienced satisfactory outcomes after using contact centres, at 80%compared with 76.5%; while, in terms of age, those that were aged 20 to 24reported the highest levels of satisfaction at 100%.



By social grade, respondents belonging to grades B and C1 were the most likelyto have had a satisfactory experience when making queries using a contactcentre, as were those that were not working, excluding those that were retired/invalid (82.6%) and respondents that lived in Yorkshire and Humberside(82.5%). Other demographics to observe high levels of satisfaction aftercontacting an organisation in order to make a query included those that livedin four-person households (83.7%); those that were separated (94.2%);respondents with children aged 5 to 9 years old (79.6%); and those that wereliving in accommodation rented from the council (83.8%).

Table 10.12: When I Telephone an Organisation With a Query,It Is Usually Answered to My Satisfaction


Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 78.2

Sex

Male 47.5 48.6 80.0

Female 52.5 51.4 76.5

Age

16-19 6.3 7.5 92.4

20-24 8.8 11.3 100.0

25-34 17.5 16.7 74.5

35-44 18.4 18.8 79.7

45-54 16.3 15.5 74.2

55-64 13.1 12.3 73.4

65+ 19.6 18.1 72.0

Social Grade

A 4.1 3.8 72.8

B 14.2 14.6 80.4

C1 30.2 31.4 81.3

C2 30.0 28.7 74.9

D 11.2 11.2 77.9

E 10.3 10.2 77.5

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Working Status


Part time 16.5 15.7 74.5



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.1 71.9





South East 20.1 19.5 75.7


South West 10.6 11.2 82.1

North West 11.9 12.0 78.3

Wales 4.7 4.6 76.6

Scotland 9.4 9.9 82.2

Size of Household

One person 22.4 21.3 74.2

Two person 30.1 29.6 76.8


Four person 19.3 20.7 83.7


Marital Status


Single 29.6 32.3 85.3

Divorced 5.9 4.8 63.4

Widowed 9.1 8.7 75.3

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample





Aged 0-4 10.8 11.0 79.4

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.7 79.6

Aged 10-15 13.4 12.9 75.2

No children 72.9 72.8 78.1

Tenure


Buying home 35.5 36.3 80.0





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Complaints

An increase in the proportion of customers that felt that complaints made tocontact centres had been satisfactorily resolved was also observed between2009 and 2012, with penetration rising from 67.9% to 71.3% over the 3-yearperiod. Women were more likely to agree with the statement than men, at72.3% compared with 70.1%; as were those belonging to the middle agegroups, particularly respondents aged between 25 and 44 years old.



Respondents belonging to social grade C1 were the most likely to feel thatcomplaints made via telephone were resolved satisfactorily (77.4%), comparedwith those in social grade A, who were the least likely to do so (61.2%).Furthermore, respondents in work (both full- and part-time) reported higherpenetrations than those that were out of work, both those that were retired/invalid and those that were unemployed (e.g. students, those out of work,etc.). In terms of region, those living in Greater London were the most satisfiedwith contact centres’ complaints handling procedures (80.6%), compared withthose residing in the West Midlands, who were the least likely to be satisfied(57.8%).

Other demographics to register high satisfaction levels included those living inhouseholds of five people or more (82%); respondents that were married/livingas married (75.9%); those with children aged 5 to 9 years old (85.1%); and thosethat were in the process of buying their own home (74.7%).

Table 10.13: When I Telephone an Organisation Witha Complaint, It Is Usually Resolved to My Satisfaction


Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 71.3

Sex

Male 47.5 46.7 70.1

Female 52.5 53.3 72.3

Age

16-19 6.3 6.0 67.5

20-24 8.8 8.1 65.2

25-34 17.5 19.9 80.8

35-44 18.4 20.2 78.5

45-54 16.3 15.9 69.8

55-64 13.1 12.4 67.6

65+ 19.6 17.5 63.6

Social Grade

A 4.1 3.5 61.2

B 14.2 14.3 71.8

C1 30.2 32.8 77.4

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Social Grade (cont.)

C2 30.0 30.1 71.6

D 11.2 9.7 61.8

E 10.3 9.5 65.5

Working Status


Part time 16.5 16.3 70.2



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.1 66.4





South East 20.1 19.7 69.7


South West 10.6 11.6 77.8

North West 11.9 11.2 66.9

Wales 4.7 4.4 65.9

Scotland 9.4 10.2 77.0

Size of Household

One person 22.4 20.0 63.7

Two person 30.1 29.5 69.7


Four person 19.3 20.8 76.6


Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Marital Status


Single 29.6 28.1 67.6

Divorced 5.9 4.8 57.9

Widowed 9.1 8.8 68.9



Aged 0-4 10.8 12.6 83.3

Aged 5-9 10.5 12.5 85.1

Aged 10-15 13.4 13.4 71.2

No children 72.9 70.6 69.0

Tenure


Buying home 35.5 37.2 74.7





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note



THE SUCCESS OF TELESALES

The greatest proportion of respondents hardly ever purchased goods off oftelesales agents (46.6%), while 13.5% purchased things from time to time.However, nearly a third (30.5%) bought things from telesales agents on afrequent basis.

Women were more likely than men to purchase goods from telephonesalespeople frequently (34.5%), while men were more likely to do so from timeto time (15.3%) or hardly ever (47%). In terms of age, younger and older agegroups were less inclined to buy things via telesales, while those in youngerage groups were more likely to frequently be persuaded or felt more underpressure to do so, with 39.8% of those aged 20 to 24 years old agreeing thatthis was the case. Telesales was more popular among those in the middle socialgrades (i.e. C1, C2 and D), while those in grade B hardly ever purchased thingsin this way (54.6%) and 15.2% of those belonging to grade C2 did so from timeto time.

Respondents that were not working (retired/invalid) registered higherpenetrations for hardly ever purchasing goods or services or feeling underpressure to do so from telesales agents (52.1%), and for doing so from time totime (15.3%). In comparison, nearly half (44.8%) of those working part timefrequently bought items via telesales agents. Regionally, respondents living inthe East Midlands were the most likely to frequently buy goods or servicesfollowing a sales call, while those living in Wales were most inclined to do sofrom time to time (24%) and those residing in the North West, hardly ever(67%).

Other demographics that were found to be the most frequent purchasers ofgoods and services following a telesales call included those that lived inthree-person households (37.2%); respondents that were separated (48.7%);those with young children aged 0 to 4 years old (45.4%); and those that livedin council-rented accommodation (38.4%). In contrast, respondents that weremost likely to hardly ever purchase goods in this way included those living insmaller households of one or two people; respondents that were widowed(56.7%); those that had no children (49.6%); and those living in rent-freeaccommodation (57.8%)



Table 10.14: Percentage of Respondents That Are Persuadedby Telesales Agents to Purchase Something or Are Made

to Feel Under Pressure (% of respondents), November 2012

Hardly Ever Time to Time Frequently

All adults 46.6 13.5 30.5

Sex

Male 47.0 15.3 26.0

Female 46.3 11.8 34.5

Age

16-19 50.2 12.7 33.2

20-24 44.1 7.7 39.8

25-34 47.0 11.1 32.5

35-44 43.5 13.5 31.4

45-54 45.8 13.3 30.5

55-64 45.7 17.4 27.2

65+ 50.5 15.9 24.9

Social Grade

A 49.7 8.0 28.3

B 54.6 13.1 20.9

C1 41.7 14.4 34.5

C2 46.3 15.2 28.0

D 48.6 9.8 34.7

E 47.3 12.3 35.2

Working Status


Part time 33.9 13.5 44.8



Standard Region

North 47.3 8.1 34.4




Table continues...





...table continued




South East 44.4 10.6 34.1


South West 36.3 19.1 32.6

North West 67.0 9.1 21.8

Wales 37.1 24.0 32.0

Scotland 40.2 20.6 34.7

Size of Household

One person 51.2 16.0 27.5

Two person 52.2 10.3 29.7


Four person 43.7 11.9 30.3


Marital Status


Single 48.9 13.4 31.0

Divorced 44.1 16.4 31.2

Widowed 56.7 17.5 21.4

Separated 35.8 10.0 48.7


Aged 0-4 33.1 12.8 45.4

Aged 5-9 43.4 20.2 26.3

Aged 10-15 43.9 15.9 23.1

No children 49.6 12.9 29.6

Table continues...





...table continued


Tenure


Buying home 46.0 10.6 34.0





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

Nearly three quarters (74.7%) of respondents revealed that they did not accepttelephone calls from salespersons unless they had contacted them previously,with more women than men agreeing that this was the case, at 78.1%compared with 71%. Respondents belonging to older age groups were morelikely to ignore sales calls unless having contacted organisations previously, aswere those in the middle social grades, such as B, C1 and C2.

Respondents that worked part time registered the highest penetration(79.6%); while those not working (excluding those that were retired/invalid)reported the lowest (68.8%). By region, those living in the East Midlands werethe most likely to ignore sales calls unless previously giving permission (84.4%),which compared with 64.9% of those living in the West Midlands, wherepeople were less likely to do the same.

Other demographics to observe high levels of penetration included those livingin one-person households (76.4%); respondents that were widowed (83.5%);those with young children aged 0 to 4 years old (76.1%); and those that owntheir own home outright (77.4%).



Table 10.15: I Do Not Accept Telephone Calls From SalespersonsUnless I Have Contacted Them Previously


Sample


All adults 100.0 100.0 74.7

Sex

Male 47.5 45.1 71.0

Female 52.5 54.9 78.1

Age

16-19 6.3 5.5 65.4

20-24 8.8 7.6 64.2

25-34 17.5 18.1 77.2

35-44 18.4 18.4 74.9

45-54 16.3 15.9 73.1

55-64 13.1 14.3 81.5

65+ 19.6 20.2 76.8

Social Grade

A 4.1 3.4 61.9

B 14.2 14.1 74.2

C1 30.2 31.4 77.6

C2 30.0 30.0 74.7

D 11.2 11.3 75.1

E 10.3 9.9 71.7

Working Status


Part time 16.5 17.6 79.6



Standard Region

North 3.3 3.1 69.2




Table continues...





...table continued

Sample




South East 20.1 20.9 77.4


South West 10.6 11.9 83.9

North West 11.9 11.6 72.9

Wales 4.7 4.7 74.2

Scotland 9.4 9.8 77.5

Size of Household

One person 22.4 22.9 76.4

Two person 30.1 30.0 74.4


Four person 19.3 19.1 73.9


Marital Status


Single 29.6 28.2 71.2

Divorced 5.9 5.4 67.9

Widowed 9.1 10.1 83.5



Aged 0-4 10.8 11.0 76.1

Aged 5-9 10.5 10.4 74.3

Aged 10-15 13.4 13.0 72.4

No children 72.9 72.9 74.7

Table continues...





...table continued

Sample


Tenure


Buying home 35.5 34.9 73.5





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note

ISSUES WITH COMMUNICATION OVER THE PHONE

The majority of respondents understood call centre staff from time to time(38.4%), while 34.4% understood staff on a frequent basis. Despite this, overa quarter (26%) of respondents revealed that they hardly ever understood callcentre staff. While women were more likely to have the most difficultyunderstanding call centre staff, men were more likely to understand calloperatives from time to time (38.5%) or on a frequent basis (36.3%). A cleardisparity was also observed in terms of age, with respondents belonging toyounger age groups — i.e. aged between 20 and 34 — being the most likelyto comprehend call agents frequently; while those in middle age groupstended to understand call centre staff from time to time and those in older agegroups hardly ever understood agents.



By social grade, respondents in grade D were more likely to have the mosttrouble understanding call centre staff, with 33.9% revealing that they hardlyever comprehended call operatives; while those in grade B were the most likelyto understand staff from time to time (45.5%) and those in grade C2 registeredthe highest penetration for frequently understanding staff (38.5%). Generally,those working — either part or full time — encountered the least difficultywhen communicating with call centre staff. In comparison, those that were notworking (retired/invalid) had the most difficulty, with 36% revealing that theyhardly ever understood call operatives. This could be down to the largernumber of older consumers belonging to this particular demographic.

Other groups to experience difficulties in communication when talking to acall centre operative included those living in the West Midlands (35.4%);respondents residing in one-person households (30.7%); those that werewidowed (42.1%); those without any children (28.5%); and those that lived incouncil-rented accommodation (40.4%). These results suggest that olderconsumers, who live by themselves and are retired, generally encounter themost difficulties when attempting to understand call centre agents.

In contrast, respondents that lived in the North (46.4%); as well as those thatresided in four-person households (41%); were separated (54.9%); hadchildren aged between 5 and 9 (45.2%); and lived in privately rentedaccommodation (35.9%) or rent-free occupancy (53%), were the least likely toencounter difficulties in understanding and communicating with call centrestaff and frequently comprehended call centre operatives.

Table 10.16: Penetration of Respondents that Understand CallCentre Staff Hardly Ever, From Time to Time or Frequently



All adults 26.0 38.4 34.4

Sex

Male 24.6 38.5 36.3

Female 27.3 38.3 32.6

Age

16-19 51.1 28.6 20.3

20-24 4.1 45.8 50.1

25-34 15.1 32.6 52.3

35-44 23.8 42.3 30.6

45-54 22.8 41.0 35.6

55-64 32.2 41.3 25.3

Table continues...





...table continued


Age (cont.)

65+ 38.1 35.6 24.2

Social Grade

A 32.1 38.7 27.8

B 19.0 45.5 34.1

C1 23.7 40.0 35.7

C2 26.0 34.1 38.5

D 33.9 35.5 30.5

E 31.4 39.5 25.5

Working Status


Part time 20.8 33.8 43.3



Standard Region

North 21.0 32.7 46.4




East Anglia 24.4 37.9 35.4

South East 27.6 29.5 39.7


South West 33.0 44.4 21.8

North West 21.2 43.4 34.9

Wales 27.6 49.9 22.5

Scotland 24.1 47.4 27.9

Table continues...





...table continued


Size of Household

One person 30.7 34.4 33.5

Two person 27.6 42.5 29.3


Four person 26.4 30.3 41.0


Marital Status


Single 24.9 38.3 36.4

Divorced 26.7 35.6 36.2

Widowed 42.1 29.3 27.9

Separated 8.2 36.9 54.9


Aged 0-4 20.6 37.8 41.6

Aged 5-9 14.0 40.4 45.2

Aged 10-15 20.8 41.9 33.6

No children 28.5 38.6 31.9

Tenure


Buying home 22.2 43.8 33.2





Pen — penetration




Source: Key Note



11. Competitor Analysis

INTRODUCTION

This chapter contains profiles of some of the largest companies that dominateor have operations within the contact centres market. It should be noted,however, that due to the diverse nature of businesses that operate in-housecontact centres, this section will primarily concentrate on outsourcers. Profilesfor some of the leading software and technology suppliers that providesolutions to the contact centres industry have also been included.

OUTSOURCERS

Capita PLC

Capita PLC is the UK’s leading business process outsourcing (BPO) andprofessional services company. It delivers a range of back office administrationservices, as well as contact centre solutions to businesses operating within boththe private and public sectors, across the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Thecompany currently employs around 46,500 people across its operations and hasa number of high-profile clients, including insurance firm Zurich; the BBC’stelevision licensing operations; the Teachers’ Pension Scheme; and the CriminalRecords Bureau (CRB).

Capita was originally formed as a division within the Chartered Institute ofPublic Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) in 1984, before being launched as anindependent company following a management buyout (MBO) backed by 33investors in 1987. Since then, the company has continued to expand througha number of acquisitions and has won a wide range of lucrative contracts acrossa range of sectors. In July 2011, the company acquired contact centre specialistVentura for a cash consideration of £65m. Ventura (trading name Club 24 Ltd)is the third-party customer services management arm of Next PLC, managingmore than 50 million contacts each year including both public- andprivate-sector clients, such as O2, British Gas and BMI. In the same year, Capitaalso revealed that it had continued its acquisition spree after purchasing theprivate-sector division of contact centre group Vertex, which managescontracts for Marks & Spencer (M&S), The National Trust and Scottish Power,for a cash consideration of £40.5m. Both these acquisitions have served toboost Capita’s position within the UK market.

Contact Centres Competitor Analysis


More recent acquisitions have included medical assessment and criminal justicesupport services firm Reliance Secure Task Management, which providesforensic medical services, custody support and secure transport services toclients such as the UK Border Agency, the Ministry of Justice, National HealthService (NHS) Trusts and the police forces, which Capita purchased for £20m inAugust 2012. In the same month, the BPO specialist announced that it hadpurchased business travel firm Expotel for a consideration of £16m.Furthermore, in September 2012, Capita revealed that it had acquired financialservices outsourcing specialist Whale Rock Accounting for an undisclosed sum;this was followed by the acquisition of Medicare First, a social work recruitmentconsultancy, in October 2012.

Table 11.1 displays the most recent annual financial results for Capita BusinessServices Ltd, a subsidiary of Capita PLC, which is principally responsible for theprovision of outsourcing solutions including customer services, informationtechnology (IT), business support and consultancy, administration, andrecruitment services. In the year ending 31st December 2011, Capita BusinessServices Ltd registered a turnover of £885.1m and a pre-tax profit of £215.1m.This compares with a turnover of £941.4m and a pre-tax profit of £203m in theprevious year.

Table 11.1: Financial Results for Capita Business Services Ltd(£m), Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 1,017.3 941.4 885.1

% change year-on-year - -7.5 -6.0

Pre-tax profit 225.5 203.0 215.1

% change year-on-year - -10.0 6.0

Source: Key Note

CPM UK Ltd

CPM UK Ltd is part of Omnicom Group’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS),which provides a variety of marketing disciplines to its clients. CPM providesoutsourced outbound telesales and customer care services, including salesforce, tactical merchandising and dedicated customer care. The companyprovides brand management, as well as data management and fulfilmentservices, and logistics and distribution. It also operates a mystery shoppingdivision, which assesses sales and customer handling processes. The company’sclients have included a number of well-known brands includingMercedes-Benz, British Gas, Procter & Gamble (P&G), Kellogg’s, ASDA andDiageo, among others.



The company’s contact centre services include a high-performance sales centre,which focuses on sales process planning; market intelligence; the provision ofdirect and indirect sales campaigns; and contact centre training. CPM also runsa customer experience centre that delivers quality customer experiences;outbound consumer communications; white mail, telephone and Internetenquiries; customer complaints and requests; and product informationservices.

According to the company’s latest financial accounts, in the year ending31st December 2011, CPM UK registered a pre-tax profit of £7.1m on a turnoverof £100.8m. This compares with a pre-tax profit of £5.7m and a turnover of£90.3m in the previous year.

Table 11.2: Financial Result for CPM UK Ltd (£m),Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 81.3 90.3 100.8

% change year-on-year - 11.1 11.6

Pre-tax profit 6.1 5.7 7.1


Source: Key Note

Geoban UK Ltd

Geoban SA was originally founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Spain. Thecompany was established in order to supply BPO services to the financial sector,serving the Santander Group entities and banks based in Europe and theAmericas through several locally based offices and contact centre operations.Geoban currently has offices in locations around the world including in Spain,Portugal, the UK, Poland, Mexico, Argentina and the US. The company’s UKoffices were first opened towards the end of 2007, initially to manage thebank’s mortgage loan activities — the main business of Santander UK, whichalso owns Abbey, Alliance & Leicester (A&L) and parts of Bradford & Bingley(B&B).

The main services offered by Geoban to the Santander Group include themanagement of asset and liabilities accounts; foreign trade services; integralmanagement solutions covering card payments including fraud prevention;transactional services for securities, liquid assets and collective investmentinstitutions; and the management of activities relating to settlements, renting,factoring, securitisation and insurance.



In the year ending 31st December 2011, Geoban UK Ltd registered a a pre-taxprofit of £79,000 on a turnover of £133.3m, which compares with a turnoverof £112.9m and a pre-tax profit of £7,000 recorded the previous year.

Table 11.3: Financial Results for Geoban UK Ltd (£m and £000),Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover (£m) 42.9 112.9 133.3


Pre-tax profit (£000) 8 7 79

% change year-on-year - -12.5 1,028.6

Source: Key Note

The Innovation Group PLC

BPO and outsourcing solutions expert The Innovation Group PLC was originallyestablished in 1996 as Merlinace, before changing its name in 1999. In 2000,the company undertook an Initial Public Offering (IPO), through which it raised£300m. This investment, along with a number of acquisitions, has resulted inthe successful expansion and growth of the company over the past decade orso. The company now provides a wide variety of software and outsourcingsolutions to the insurance industry and allied sectors, employing around 2,300people across offices in 13 different countries. Currently, The Innovation Groupservices over 800 clients, including 75% of the top 20 global insurance marketsand 80% of the top 20 global insurance companies, as well as the majority ofthe world’s top ten fleet and lease management companies and regionalleaders in finance. In the UK, clients include the AA, Aviva PLC, Co-operativeInsurance Services, GE Capital Fleet Services, KGM Underwriting Agencies Ltd,Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Insurance and ZurichFinancial Services, among many others.

The company’s BPO services include policy, warranty, fleet, risk and fraud, andproperty and subsidence management; as well as claims and incidentmanagement, repair and supply network management, and subrogationrecovery and salvage.

In the year ending 30th September 2011, The Innovation Group PLC registereda pre-tax profit of £10.2m on a turnover of £175.9m. This compares with aturnover of £162.1m and a pre-tax loss of £1.7m in the previous year.



Table 11.4: Financial Results for The Innovation Group PLC (£m),Years Ending 30th September 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 155.9 162.1 175.9


Pre-tax profit -19.8 -1.7 10.2

% change year-on-year - † †

† — incalculable

Source: Key Note

Serco Group PLC

Serco was originally founded in 1929 as RCA Services Ltd, to support the UK’sgrowing cinema industry. In the 1960s, the company won a contract to supplymaintenance for the UK Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) at theRoyal Air Force (RAF) base in Fylingdales, a move that began to shape thebusiness’ future as a major services outsourcer within the country. Since then,the company has continued to gain further contracts, mainly within the publicsector in the UK. In 1987, RCA Services Ltd was the subject of an MBO and wasrenamed Servo Ltd. After this, the company continued to expand and diversifyits operations by attracting business from the private sector. The company nowhas a strong international presence, with offices based in Europe, the MiddleEast, Asia-Pacific and North America, with around 40% of its turnovergenerated from operations outside of the UK.

Serco is a leading provider of BPO services to public- and private-sectororganisations across the world. It provides a number of solutions, includingcustomer relationship management (CRM), finance and accounting,procurement, human resources (HR), outsourcing and transaction processing,through its 99 contact centres based across ten countries. The companyemploys around 50,000 people, which process over 90 million interactions in20 languages across the world. The company also provides consultancy serviceson a range of subjects, such as IT, risk and resilience and operational strategy;as well as transport solutions, environmental services, and research andknowledge solutions. The company services a range of sectors, including thepublic sector, technology, leisure and transport industries.



In the UK, Serco is primarily involved in providing outsourced services to thejustice, education, health and local authority services. Its commercial clientsmainly comprise multi-service facilities management contracts for blue-chipclients, including pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The companyis also a key provider of transport services within the UK and works alongsideAbellio, which runs Northern Rail and Merseyrail. In London, the companyoperates the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme andthe East London Traffic Control System, as well as several motorwayinfrastructure services.

In recent years, the company has continued to expand its contact centreoperations through a number of acquisitions. For example, in March 2011,Serco announced that it had acquired The Listening Company, a UK-basedprovider of outsourced customer contact centre services to both private- andpublic-sector organisations, for a cash consideration of around £42.1m. Morerecently, in June 2012, the company revealed that it had purchased the publicsector BPO operations of Vertex Data Science Ltd for a cash consideration of£55.5m.

Serco PLC’s UK contact centre operations are managed via the company’ssubsidiary, Serco Listening Company Ltd. According to Serco ListeningCompany Ltd’s most recent financial results, the company registered a turnoverof £87.3m in the 61 weeks ending 31st December 2011, up by 6.7% from the52-week period ending 31st October 2010. However, pre-tax profit fell from aprofit of £964,000 to a loss of £9.5m over the same period.

Table 11.5: Financial Results for Serco Listening Company Ltd(£m), Years Ending 31st October 2009-2010 and 61 Weeks

Ending 31st December 2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 73.7 81.8 87.3


Pre-tax profit 3.7 0.9 -9.5

% change year-on-year - -75.7 †


Source: Key Note



Vertex Data Science Ltd

Vertex is a leading BPO company, employing approximately 11,000 globalprofessionals and servicing around 200 clients across the world, with officesbased in 30 locations across the globe including the UK, the US, Australia andIndia. The company’s clients include Hydro Once, Southstar Energy and Oncor.Vertex operates across four main divisions, including:

• BPO & Customer Management Outsourcing — includes collections andspecial servicing, back office and contact centre solutions, document andpayment management, finance and administration and home workingsolutions

• Consulting & Transformation — includes consulting services for utilities firms,contact centre channel optimisation solutions and optimisation tools toimprove customer service experiences

• Decision Sciences — Vertex supplies a range of analytics tools, models andsimulations, including data warehousing and business intelligence, as well asstatistical analysis and analytic deployment tools, which can identify futuretrends

• IT Applications & Services — provides a range of IT applications, as well ascontact centre software solutions, such as CRM systems and speechrecognition and telephony solutions; and employs around 1,000 IT experts.

Over the past year or so, Vertex has undergone a period of restructure afterselling off various parts of its business. In November 2011, the companyannounced that it had sold its private-sector business to competitor CapitaGroup PLC for a consideration of £40.5m; this was followed, in December 2011,by the MBO of Vertex Australia to a management team led by VertexAustralia’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Phil Allan for an undisclosed sum.More recently, in June 2012, the company revealed that it had agreed to sellits public-sector business to international services outsourcing firm Serco for anundisclosed amount.

In the year ending 31st March 2012, Vertex Data Science Ltd registered aturnover of £340.4m, down by 17.5% from the £412.6m recorded in theprevious year. The company also posted a pre-tax profit of £16.2 in 2012,following a pre-tax loss of £14.5m in 2011.



Table 11.6: Financial Results for Vertex Data Science Ltd(£m), Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012

2010 2011 2012

Turnover 365.9 412.6 340.4

% change year-on-year - 12.8 -17.5

Pre-tax profit 32.4 -14.5 16.2



Source: Key Note

SOFTWARE AND INFRASTRUCTURE SUPPLIERS

Aspect Software Ltd

Aspect is a global provider of customer contact and workforce optimisationsolutions. Software and technology solutions supplied by the company includeunified communications (UC) solutions and collaboration platforms such asMicrosoft SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and Lync. The company also developsMicrosoft-based solutions, such as customer portals, dashboards and mobilitysolutions, and applies UC technologies in order to streamlinecustomer-company interactions within contact centres and across a firm’swider business activities. Other customer contact solutions provided by Aspectinclude: inbound automatic call distributors (ACDs); outbound diallers; voiceportal/interactive voice response (IVR) solutions; Internet contact/e-mail/weband campaign optimisation; as well as workforce, quality and performancemanagement platforms. Major clients serviced by Aspect have includedAmBank Group and British Gas. The company has, so far, helped more than3,000 clients across 50 countries and employs around 1,900 people.

According to the company’s most recent financial accounts, Aspect SoftwareUK Ltd registered a turnover of £48.6m in the year ending 31st December 2011,up by 11.3% from £43.6m. However, pre-tax profit fell by 86% over the same2-year period, decreasing from £841,000 in 2010 to £118,000 in 2011.



Table 11.7: Financial Results for Aspect Software UK Ltd(£000), Years Ending 31st December 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 43,222 43,648 48,567


Pre-tax profit -7,020 841 118

% change year-on-year - † -86.0


Source: Key Note

Avaya UK Ltd

Avaya was originally founded in 2000 after being spun off from enterprisecommunications group Lucent Technologies, before which it was part of AT&T.In October 2007, the company became privately held, after being acquired bySilver Lake and TPG Capital.

Avaya provides a wide range of BPO solutions, including business collaborationand communications solutions, UC, real-time video collaboration, contactcentre services, networking and related to services to companies across theworld. The company’s contact centre suite — called the Avaya Aura® ContactCenter Suite — provides a single, integrated customer queue, using a varietyof communications channels such as voice, video, e-mail, chat and social media.Other contact centre solutions supplied by the company include Avaya IQ, ananalytics tool that monitors and analyses the performance of contact centres;and Proactive Outreach Manager, which helps staff to manage multichanneloperations including automated welcome e-mails, notification calls and textreminders. The company also provides distributed Internet Protocol (IP) contactcentre solutions, intelligent customer routing, home agent solutions,self-service and customer experience management solutions.

According to Avaya UK Ltd’s most recent financial accounts, the companygenerated a turnover of £170.1m in the year ending 30th September 2011 anda pre-tax loss of £2.7m. This compares with a turnover of £163.7m and a pre-taxloss of £15.9m in 2010.



Table 11.8: Financial Results for Avaya UK Ltd (£m),Years Ending 30th September 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 96.7 163.7 170.1


Pre-tax profit -3.4 -15.9 -2.7



Source: Key Note

BT

As well as offering network telecommunications infrastructure to call centrebusinesses across the UK, BT also provides a wide range of contact centresoftware and technology solutions through its BT Contact division. Solutionssupplied by the company include a variety of agent desktop applications; calland contact recording; pay-as-you-go cloud contact centre solutions; customerpremise equipment; inbound services; self-service and queue managementplatforms; and workforce management solutions. BT provides these productsin partnership with a number of contact centre software specialists includingGenesys, Cisco and Avaya, among others.

The company also supplies a range of UC solutions through its BT One division,including hosted UC services, IP telephony and voice virtual private networks.It also provides consultancy and advisory solutions for a range of sectorspertaining to the setup and infrastructure implementation involved whenopening a contact centre and it works across a number of industries includingfinancial services, retail and private banking, retail, utilities, and the publicsector. Clients serviced by BT’s contact centre solutions divisions have includedBanco Sabadell, Agoda, Lufthansa, Sainsbury’s and the Prudential.

BT Global Services manages the provision of contact centre solutions for theBT group. According to its latest financial results, BT Global Services Ltdregistered a turnover of £88.8m in the year ending 31st March 2011, down by2.1% from £90.7m in the previous year. However, pre-tax profit increased overthe same period, after rising from a loss of £3.1m in 2010 to a profit of £1.3min 2011.



Table 11.9: Financial Results for BT Global Services (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 70,033 90,712 88,832


Pre-tax profit 719 -3,077 1,317



Source: Key Note

Cisco

US-based firm Cisco was originally formed in 1984 by husband and wife teamLen Bosack and Sandy Lerner. While the company provides a wide range ofcontact centre solutions, it also supplies a variety of network architectures andother networking services, as well as business technology hardware, IPinfrastructure and cloud-computing solutions. The company is one of the mostprominent networking solutions providers in the world, with 63,000 employeesbased in 475 offices in 165 countries across the globe.

Cisco provides a wide variety of UC solutions aimed at contact centres andcustomer service operations. These supply effective management solutions fora range of contact centre activities, such as social media campaigns, callrecording, speech analytics, contact routing, network-to-desktop computertelephony integration (CTI), self-service and IVR solutions.

According to the most recent financial accounts reported by Cisco InternationalLtd, the company registered a turnover of £7.39bn in the year ending30th July 2011, up by 32.7% from the £5.57bn recorded in the previous year.Pre-tax profit also increased over the same period, rising by 20% from £39.6mto £47.5m.

IBM Global Process Services

IBM Global Process Services, a subsidiary of technology giant IBM, provides awide range of BPO consultancy services, including CRM solutions; finance andadministration; HR; and procurement and supply chain management services.



The company’s CRM solutions are designed to appeal to multi-channel contactcentres and customer service businesses, and IBM supports a wide range ofchannels through its UC platform, including voice, digital and written channels;IVR including natural language speech recognition; Internet, video calls, chatand social media; mail and fax; short messaging service (SMS) and automatedoutbound messaging; e-mail and forums; as well as in-store and face-to-faceservices. IBM Global Process Services also provide a range of support solutions,including technical and product support, collections and risk management,health solutions, global production and content management, and dataanalytics. The company provides tailored services to several vertical industriesincluding banking, healthcare, government, telecommunications andinsurance. In recent years, the Global Process Services division of IBM hassupplied solutions to a number of well-known companies, including Transportfor London (TfL), Unilever, General Motors (GM) and Southwest One. Thecompany employs more than 50,000 experts in over 35 delivery centres aroundthe world and serves more than 90 companies in 50 different languages.

According to IBM’s 2011 Annual Report, the company’s Business Servicesdivision, which is responsible for its BPO solutions, generated a turnover of$19.28bn in the year ending 31st December 2011, up by 5.8% from the$18.22bn that it reported in the previous year.

Mitel Networks Ltd

Mitel was originally founded in 1973 and is a global provider of businesscommunications and collaboration software and services. The company hasoperations in over 90 countries and is in partnership with over 1,600companies, servicing more than 100,000 customers worldwide.

The company supplies contact centre solutions through its Mitel® ContactCenter Solutions product, which allows businesses to efficiently integrate awide range of communications channels, such as voice, e-mail, web chat, SMSand fax. This product also provides a social media monitoring application forcompanies that wish to assess the performance of their brand image via socialmedia and the customer perception of their company via social networks. Inaddition, the company offers customer expectation management solutions,such as queue waiting capabilities; along with self-service options; mediadistribution and routing applications, e.g. automatic call distributioncapabilities; and customer profiling solutions that locate priority customer callsas they come through. Other solutions provided by Mitel include desktopproductivity tools for call agents; back office integration solutions; real-timedesktop applications; and full voice and data capabilities. It also providesservices that are equipped for home workers or other mobile call agents.Workforce management solutions are also available from Mitel, which helpsupervisors to schedule calls and assess contact centre performance, as well asproviding call traffic analysis.

According to the company’s latest financial accounts, Mitel Networks Ltdregistered a turnover of £104.9m in the year ending 30th April 2011, up by6.9% from £98.1m in the previous year. Pre-tax profit observed a significantincrease over the same period, after rising by 305.5% from £566,000 in 2010to £2.3m in 2011.



Table 11.10: Financial Results for Mitel Networks Ltd (£000),Years Ending 30th April 2009-2011

2009 2010 2011

Turnover 100,046 98,125 104,851


Pre-tax profit -11,111 566 2,295

% change year-on-year - † 305.5


Source: Key Note

ONI PLC

ONI is a communications integrator that delivers a range of businesscommunication solutions to organisations in both the public and privatesectors. It provides several technical solutions, including data centre services,contact centre solutions, UC, borderless infrastructure, connectivity servicesand bespoke development; as well as a number of professional services, suchas business and technical consultancy, project management and post-salessupport.

ONI is one of the leading contact centre specialists based in the UK and providesmigration services to aid the transition within contact centres from traditionaltelephony to multimedia IP infrastructure. This includes the provision of abusiness communications portfolio; inbound and outbound contact centresolutions; advanced self-service functionality; web-based multimedia services;call recording and workforce optimisation; hosted, hybrid or on-premisesolutions; and systems integration and bespoke development. The companyalso supplies cloud-based solutions to several clients and is a gold partner ofnetworking equipment developer Cisco Systems. Indeed, it is one of the fewUK operators to develop and support Cisco Unified Contact Center Exprexx(UCCX) and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) contact centre solutions.

ONI has a particularly strong presence within the public sector as a supplier ofbusiness communications solutions and consultancy services and has over 100clients within local and Central Government, defence and intelligence,education, social housing and charities.

According to the company’s most recent financial results, ONI PLC registered aturnover of £12m and a pre-tax loss of £829,000 in the year ending31st March 2011. This compares with a turnover of £20m and a pre-tax profitof £928,000 in the previous year.



Table 11.11: Financial Results for ONI PLC (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012

2010 2011 2012

Turnover 12,902 20,019 11,957


Pre-tax profit 621 928 -829

% change year-on-year - 49.4 †


Source: Key Note

Qas Ltd

Qas was originally established in 1990 and is now a leading supplier of addressmanagement solutions including software, data and services for collating andutilising customer contact details effectively. The company, which is owned byExperian, has offices based across the globe in regions including Europe, NorthAmerica and Asia-Pacific; and services over 10,000 customers across all marketsectors. In the UK, the company numbers among its clients well-known brandsincluding O2, Nissan, Chelsea Football Club (CFC), B&B, and Surrey Police.

The company also offers a range of additional data sets to enhance acompany’s contact database, including Experian’s National Business Databasewhich contains over 2.79 million records; International data, for 86 countriesbased in North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific; and Dataplus sets, which canbe added to existing address records at the point of capture or during a datasetupdate in order to improve insight into customer data. Other professionalservices provided by Qas include business services consultancy, training, anddata management and migration.

According to Qas Ltd’s latest financial accounts, the company registered apre-tax profit of £32m in the year ending 31st March 2012, on a turnover of£88.8m. This compares with a turnover of £89m and a pre-tax profit of £30.3min the previous year.



Table 11.12: Financial Results for Qas Ltd (£000),Years Ending 31st March 2010-2012

2010 2011 2012

Turnover 84,191 88,945 88,753


Pre-tax profit 37,416 30,344 32,043


Source: Key Note

Salesforce

Salesforce is the market leader in cloud-computing solutions, with officesbased around the world including in the Americas, Europe, the Middle Eastand Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific. Clients include GE, Chipotle, Electronic Arts(EA), News International and Thomas Reuters. The company provides bothsocial and mobile cloud technologies, including sales and CRM applications. Itsupplies a range of cloud applications and platforms, including customerservice and support solutions, and social media monitoring and engagementtools.

The company’s Service Cloud platform provides a range of solutions for contactcentres, including:

• Chatter — allows call agents to collaborate with each other, share insightand gain input from peers; users can also customise their feeds to attaininformation from particular groups and individuals

• Contracts and Entitlements — monitors key customer milestones and metrics,as well as progress and service quality

• Dashboards and Reports — provides customer service metrics, and allowsdashboards to be customised by users

• E-mail — allows users to create and assign cases from incoming e-mail; andprovides a range of templates that agents can use to give measured,on-brand responses and track resolutions

• Knowledge — provides accurate answers sourced from a variety of channelsfrom Google to social media and from business partners to self-servicewebsite queries

• Live Agent — provides a web chat solution, which is pre-integrated with theService Cloud and can be embedded directly into a business’ website in orderto give customers instant answers in real-time



• Mobile — provides mobile access to the Service Cloud, thus allowingmanagers to attain metrics anywhere at any time; and supplies a range offield service applications for field management operations or logistics

• Self-Service — allows customers to search for case updates and knowledgesolutions online, and provides a platform through which customers can post,comment and validate particular service issues

• Social Contact Center — which integrates all customer cases in one unifiedagent dashboard, which can be fully integrated with a business’ call centretelephony and back-office applications and works across all contact channels

• Social Customer Service — allows queries and comments to be posted bycustomers via social media channels by routing them through a single hub,and can monitor and prioritise conversations by sentiment and influence

• Visual Workflow — manages supports processes, including call scripting,return, quotes and workflows, while also automating approvals for criticalprocesses across all customer channels.

The company also provides a Sales Cloud, which includes a range of CRMcapabilities; a Marketing Cloud, which is a unified social marketing suite; itsSalesforce Platform, which allows users to build innovative social mobile andreal-time apps; its own private social network, Chatter; andSalesforceWork.com, a sales performance management platform.

According to the latest financial accounts published by Salesforce.com Inc, thecompany registered a revenue of $2.27bn in the year ending 31st January 2012,up by 36.8% from $1.66bn in the previous year. However, pre-tax profit fellover the same period, from a profit of $69.7m in 2011 to a loss of $11.6m in2012.

Table 11.13: Financial Results for Salesforce.com Inc($m), Years Ending 31st January 2010-2012

2010 2011 2012

Revenue 1,305.6 1,657.1 2,266.5


Net income 84.7 69.7 -11.6

% change year-on-year - -17.7 †


Source: Annual Report, 2012 © Salesforce.com Inc



12. The Future

THE RISE OF ‘NORTHSHORING’

Following the increasing popularity of outsourcing contact centre andcustomer service divisions to overseas business process outsourcing (BPO) firmsat the start of the 2000s, companies have begun to transfer their contact centrebusinesses back to more domestic locations within the UK, often within theNorth of England and in Scotland. This trend has become known as‘northshoring’, with many companies attracted to the lower rents and labourcosts available in locations based in the North of the country. Some firms havealso sought out new domestic locations following price increases amongoffshore BPO suppliers, as well as rises in the number of customer complaintsregarding issues with miscommunication when talking to call agents fromother countries. According to an article published by Comms Business in July2012, there are currently around 700 contact centres based in the North of theUK, up from 521 in 2004, employing around 6% of the region’s total workforce.

Some offshore firms with headquarters based overseas, in locations such asIndia, have also benefited from the trend. For example, in 2011, Indianoutsourcing specialist Aegis revealed that it would be opening its Europeanheadquarters in Manchester, creating 600 new jobs. A number of otherbusinesses have also established offices in northern cities, with German groupBosch and US-based firm Service Source both opening contact centre branchesin Liverpool in recent years. More recently, in July 2011, Spanish bank andbuilding society firm Santander — which owns Abbey, Alliance & Leicester(A&L) and parts of Bradley & Bingley (B&B) — revealed that it would bebringing its call centres back to the UK from India following a rise in thenumber of customer complaints. The company stated that it would create 400new jobs in the UK, 200 of which would be based in Liverpool and 100 in bothLeicester and Glasgow. This follows the announcement by telecommunicationsfirm New Call Telecom earlier in the same year that it would be moving one ofits call centres from India to Burnley in Lancashire, a move that is thought tohave created 100 new jobs in the area.

According to an article published by the Financial Times in July 2012, themajority of call centres based in the North handle queries for themanufacturing, financial services and retail sectors, as well as the public sector.Companies such as O2, the AA, Barclaycard and British Gas represent some ofthe most well-known brands with contact centre operations based in theregion. Other major companies to base operations in the North have includedCapita in Darwen, Netflights in Preston and the Department for Work andPensions (DWP) in Blackpool. Greater Manchester is the most popular location,with 265 call centres based in the area, employing around 70,000 people intotal.

Contact Centres The Future


In an article published by the Financial Times in July 2012, Alison Hitchen,Business Support Manager at CallNorthWest, revealed that the call centresector in the North West had grown by 7% in 2011 — double the UK average.This particular trend is likely to continue, with increasingly more companiesexpected to move offshore contact centres back to domestic locations,particularly in the North, where rent and property prices are often much lowerthan elsewhere in the country.

NEW CONTACT CENTRE MODELS TO BE TESTED

The ‘Virtual’ Model

The ‘homeshoring’ phenomenon — that is the virtualisation of contact centreswithin employees’ homes — is expected to pick up pace over the next few years,with many companies seeking to save costs by employing home workers andproviding more flexible working conditions for their workforce. Homeshoringcan have a number of benefits, such as improving staff retention andrecruitment, improving morale, reducing carbon footprint and decreasingoverheads. According to a 2011 survey undertaken by At Home CustomerContacts, which questioned 100 UK companies, the main drivers forimplementing a home working model included employee retention (38%),employee retention (24%), customer service improvements (19%) and businesscontinuity (19%).

A number of companies have already implemented a ‘virtual’ contact centremodel, with The Co-operative Travel Group’s subsidiary Future Travel currentlyleading this area of the market, employing around 630 professionals. Otherfirms to embark on pilot trials of virtual models include Enterprise Rent-A-Carand Tesco Retail.

Increased access to Internet connections across the UK, in both businesses andhomes, as well as Government investment in the installation of superfastbroadband and the rollout of the 4G (fourth generation) mobilecommunications standards, has also helped to boost interest in virtual contactcentre models. On top of this, ongoing financial pressures caused by continuedfluctuations in the economy has forced companies to look at other businessmodels in order to help reduce expenditure and save money. The introductionof new technological solutions, such as cloud-based contact centre services,should also help to facilitate a transition to a virtual model.



The Social Business

In recent years, much has been made about the benefits and pitfalls ofemploying a social business model, with many touting it as one of the majortrends for the future. The majority of companies now employ a social mediastrategy, while increasingly more contact centres are introducing new socialmedia channels through which customers can make enquiries. A rising numberof firms are introducing social enterprise solutions across many aspects of theirbusinesses. Although social enterprise models — primarily set up for purelysocial purposes — are not likely to generate significant amounts of money, theycan work as a self-sufficient operation. For example, the mobile virtual networkoperator (MVNO) giffgaff, a subsidiary of O2, is run entirely online and by itsown customers. Since being founded in 2009, the company has received muchacclaim from market analysts and was ranked number three by Headstream’sSocial Brands 100 Report in 2012. giffgaff’s business model means that it isessentially run by its own customers who, in return for providing servicesincluding customer enquiries and tech support, are provided with discounteddeals or ‘payback points’ which can be turned into mobile credit. Othercompanies to have implemented a social business model in recent years includethe Big Issue and the Phone Co-op.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MULTICHANNEL

According to a survey undertaken by marketing research firm InsitesConsulting in September 2011, around 73% of British Internet users are onsocial networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, equating to around37 million people. As the popularity of social media has grown, so hascommercial interest from businesses regarding such platforms. This is also trueof contact centres, many of which have begun to offer communicationchannels via social networking sites, alongside other channels including e-mail,web chat and instant messenger (IM) services. As a result, the contact centreof today is often expected to embrace a multichannel strategy in order toaccommodate the modern consumer, who often enjoys the flexibility that theprovision of a variety of communication channels can bring.

Despite this, the majority of consumers still prefer to contact an organisationusing the telephone, with results from Key Note’s exclusive 2012 consumerresearch revealing that 71.6% of respondents favoured this particular channel.However, according to Genesys and Protocall One’s Multichannel Survey,undertaken in May 2012, the use of web chat enquiry forms and more visualmedia — such as Internet chat — are all on the rise, while social media hasbecome popular as a secondary channel. Despite the increasing popularity ofsocial networks within the UK, the majority of respondents (over 60%) believedthat it was not a viable channel and were not confident in using it; while 37%felt that it was more suited to public relations (PR) purposes.



Nevertheless, the use of social media, web chat and Internet self-servicechannels are likely to become increasingly important over the next few years,as they often provide a convenient customer service solution totime-constrained, modern day consumers who are used to using the Internetto troubleshoot problems that they encounter. These types of communicationchannels can also provide a more visual customer service solution, where callcentre agents can actually show consumers how to fix a particular problem,something that can be particularly useful within tech support, for example. Themanagement of social media channels, alongside other forms ofcommunication, has also been found to reduce staff attrition within contactcentres — an issue that has continued to plague the industry in past decades.

According to the 2012 survey undertaken by Genesys and Protocall One, of thesocial media channels that contact centres do use, Twitter was found to be themost popular, with 48% of respondents utilising it; 44% used Facebook and23% used LinkedIn. Twitter can be a particularly effective customer servicechannel as it allows an instant two-way conversation to take place, as canFacebook through its web chat service. However, further findings from thestudy showed that around 33% of contact centres did not directly conversewith consumers via social media, although 37% of these companies didoutsource these responsibilities to a third party. Others that chose not to utilisesocial media revealed that this was down to lack of expertise (23%) orconfidence (20%), while a further 20% stated that it was not a viable channelfor their business. Despite this, 37% of respondents revealed that theypreferred to use social media as part of their PR/communications strategyinstead of within their customer service business.

With the number of Facebook users hitting the one billion mark in 2012 and140 million people signed up to Twitter, the popularity of such sites is onlyexpected to continue to grow in the future, while the development of socialmedia’s commercial uses is also likely to become more diverse and sophisticatedas time goes on. With this in mind, it is likely that a greater number ofbusinesses, including contact centres and those that provide customer services,will become more interested in interacting with consumers using these typesof channels. The growing number of people using such sites will encourage agreater number of consumers to contact companies in this way as well.

GROWTH IN STAFF RECRUITMENT FORECAST UP TO 2015

Key Note predicts year-on-year growth of between 1% to 3% over the nextcouple of years within the contact centres industry in the UK, with growthstrengthening from 2013 to 2014 onwards following the double-dip recession.However, while some areas of the market — such as outsourcing, financialservices and communications — are likely to observe relatively strong growth,others — such transport and travel and the public sector — are expected toobserve contractions.



Total market growth is likely to be driven by the UK’s continued economicstabilisation following the double-dip recession, as well as the ongoing trendtowards ‘northshoring’, with many companies opting to move their contactcentre operations back to the UK following a rise in the number of customercomplaints and increases in costs among offshore outsourcers. The growth ofservices-based industries within the UK, which already account for around 77%of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), is also likely to boostrecruitment and investment within the contact centres market in forthcomingyears. However, it should be noted that, despite predictions that the economywill continue to recover over the next few years, public-sector operations andjobs are likely to continue to see cuts following the ongoing implementationof the Government’s austerity measures. Indeed, over the past couple of years,a number of UK councils have revealed plans to move call centre operationsoverseas in order to save money, including Lambeth Living, Lambeth council’sarms-length-management organisation (ALMO), which announced plans tooutsource its call centre operations to private firm Vangent in October 2011;Harborough District Council revealed that it would be moving call centreservices to the Loughborough-based authority Charnwood in July 2012. Whilethese moves have come under fire from unions as they are likely to result insignificant job cuts, they are also expected to create more jobs within theoutsourcing sector in the UK.



13. Further Sources

Associations

Contact Center Associationof the Philippineshttp://ccaponline.org Customer Contact Association20 Newton PlaceGlasgow, G3 7PYTelephone: 01415-649 010http://www.cca-global.com/gsx

Direct Marketing AssociationDMA House70 Margaret StreetLondon, W1W 8SSTelephone: 020-7291 3300Fax: 020-7291 3301http://www.dma.org.uk National Association of Call Centershttp://www.nationalcallcenters.org

Publications

• 2point6billion.comhttp://2point6billion.com • Annual Report, 2012Contact Centre Canada1 Promenade Antares DriveSuite 230OttawaON, K2E 8C4CanadaTelephone: 00613-232 2063Facsimile: 00613-232 9164http://www.contactcentrecanada.ca • Assessment of the Asia-PacificContact Centre Market, 2012• Contact Centre Outsourcing inEurope, 2011Frost & Sullivan4 Grosvenor GardensLondon, SW1W 0DHTelephone: 020-7343 8383Fax: 020-7730 3343http://www.frost.com

• Australian Contact CentreOutsourcing Market Study, 2011Callcentres.netNorthpointLevel 11100 Miller StreetNorth Sydney, NSW 2060AustraliaTelephone: 00612-9927 3399Fax: 00612-9927 3327E-mail: [email protected]://www.callcentres.net • Call Centre FocusUBMLudgate House245 Blackfriars RoadLondon, SE1 9UYTelephone: 020-7921 5000http://www.callcentre.co.uk

Contact Centres Further Sources


• Call Centre HelperTrevethinDixton RoadMonmouth, NP25 3PRhttp://www.callcentrehelper.com • Comms BusinessMiles Publishing LtdWhite HouseCommercial RoadTunbridge WellsKent, TN1 2RRTelephone: 01892-538 348Fax: 01892-515 724http://www.commsbusiness.co.uk • Consumer Concerns OmnibusSurvey, September 2012OfcomRiverside House2a Southwark Bridge RoadLondon, SE1 9HASwitchboard: 0300-123 3000Fax: 020-7981 3333http://www.ofcom.org.uk • Contact Centre BenchmarkingReport, 2012Dimension DataDimension Data HouseBuilding 2Waterfront Business ParkFleet RoadFleetHampshire, GU51 3QTTelephone: 01252-779 000http://www.dimensiondata.com

• Contact Centre Operations: LabourMarket Report 2012Skills CFA6 Graphite SquareVauxhall WalkLondon, SE11 5EETelephone: 020-7091 9620Fax: 020-7091 7340Telephone: [email protected]://www.skillscfa.org • Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing isChanging the Way IndiansUnderstand ThemselvesShehzad NadeemPrinceton University Press41 William StreetPrincetonNew Jersey, 08540-5237USTelephone: 001-609 258 4900Fax: 001-609 258 6305http://press.princeton.edu • Financial TimesOne Southwark BridgeLondon, SE1 9HLhttp://www.ft.com • Gearing for Change: Salary andBenefits Guide, 2011HaysGround FloorEbury Gate23 Lower Belgrave StreetLondon, SW1W 0NTTelephone: 0800-716 026http://www.hays.co.uk



• Pay and Conditions in Call andContact Centres, 2012Incomes Data SourceFinsbury Tower103-105 Bunhill RowLondon, EC1Y 8LZTelephone: 0845-077 2911http://www.incomesdata.co.uk • Social Brands 100 Report, 2012Headstream4 & 5 Grosvenor SquareSouthampton, SO15 2BETelephone: 023-8082 8575E-mail: [email protected]://www.headstream.com • The 2012 Electoral Roll ReportCallcredit Information GroupOne Park LaneLeedsWest Yorkshire, LS3 1EPTelephone: 01132-424 747Fax: 01132-424 646http://www.callcredit.co.uk

• The Multichannel Survey, 2012GenesysUnit 100Frimley Business ParkFrimleyCamberleySurrey, GU16 7SGTelephone: 01276-457 000Fax: 01276-457 001http://www.genesyslab.comProtocall OneThe PrioryStomp RoadBurnhamBuckinghamshire, SL1 7LWTelephone: 0800-881 8130Fax: 0845-466 6005http://www.pc-1.co.uk • The SunNews Group Newspapers Ltd3 Thomas More SquareLondon, E98 1XYTelephone: 020-7782 4000http://www.thesun.co.uk

General Sources

NEMS Market Research22-23 Manor WayBelasis Hall Technology ParkBillingham, TS23 4HNTelephone: 01642-373 355Fax: 01642-373 350http://www.nemsmr.co.uk



Government Publications

HM Treasury1 Horse Guards RoadLondon, SW1A 2HQTelephone: 020-7270 4558Fax: 020-7270 4861http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk• Forecasts for the UK Economy —Treasury Independent Average

Office for National StatisticsGovernment BuildingsCardiff RoadNewportSouth Wales, NP10 8XGhttp://www.statistics.gov.uk• Annual Business Survey, 2011• Labour Market Statistics, November2012• National Population Projections,2010-based projections• Population Estimates for the UK,England and Wales, Scotland andNorthern Ireland — PopulationEstimates Timeseries 1971 to CurrentYear, December 2011• United Kingdom EconomicAccounts, November 2012

Other Sources

At Home Customer Contactshttp://www.customercontactstrategies.biz BBCPortland PlaceLondon, W1A 1AAhttp://www.bbc.co.uk Citizens AdviceMyddelton House115-123 Pentonville RoadLondon, N1 9LZhttp://www.citizensadvice.org.uk

ContactCenterWorld1020 Dawson RoadSuite 305Thunder BayOntarioCanada, P7B 1K6Telephone: 001-807 624 2080Fax: 001-888 624 9178http://www.contactcenterworld.com Davies Hickman PartnersTelephone: 05600-439 888E-mail: [email protected]://www.davieshickman.com Deloitte3 New Street SquareLondon, EC4A 3BTTelephone: 020-7936 3000Fax: 020-7583 1198http://www.deloitte.com



European CommissionBerlaymont BuildingWetstraat 200 Rue de la Loi1000, BrusselsBelgiumhttp://ec.europa.eu Fifth QuadrantNorthpointLevel 11100 Miller StreetNorth Sydney, NSW 2060AustraliaTelephone: 00612-9927 3399Fax: 00612-9927 3327E-mail: [email protected] Future Travel1780 NW 122nd TerracePembroke PinesFlorida, 33026USTelephone: 001-866 431 4199Fax: 001-954 435 1153E-mail: [email protected]://www.future-travel.com Google Mobiles Ads Bloghttp://googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk Information Commissioner’s OfficeWycliffe HouseWater LaneWilmslowCheshire, SK9 5AFTelephone: 0303-123 1113Fax: 01625-524 510http://www.ico.gov.uk Insites Consulting151 Rosebery AvenueLondon, EC1R 4ABhttp://www.insites-consulting.com

Instituto Mexicano de TeleserviciosGabriel Mancera No 835Col Del ValleMexicoTelephone: 0052-55 5340 2290E-mail: [email protected]://www.imt.com.mx JabraTamesisThe GlantyEghamSurrey, TW20 9AWTelephone: 01784-220 172Fax: 01784-220 144http://www.jabra.com Nearshore AmericasNext Coast Mediahttp://www.nearshoreamericas.com SintelmarkRua Bahia941 HigienópolisSão Paulo, 01244-001BrazilE-mail: [email protected]://www.sintelmark.org.br Statistics Canada150 Tunney’s Pasture DrivewayOttawaOntario, K1A 0T6CanadaTelephone: 001-800 263 1136Fax: 001-877 287 4369E-mail: [email protected]://www.statcan.gc.ca Syntec Telecom18 The AvenueLondon, W13 8PHhttp://syntec.co.uk



Teleperformancehttp://www.teleperformance.com TI Insidehttp://www.tiinside.com.br UBMLudgate House245 Blackfriars RoadLondon, SE1 9UYTelephone: 020-7921 5000http://www.ubm.com

UnisonUnison Centre130 Euston RoadLondon, NW1 2AYTelephone: 0845-355 0845http://www.unison.org.uk University of DurhamThe Palatine CentreStockton RoadDurham, DH1 3LEhttp://www.dur.ac.uk



Key Note Sources

Key Note Ltd

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Understanding Consumer Survey Data

TGI tables, produced by Kantar Media, are generally based on one of the following groups:households — consisting of either one person living alone or a group of people, usuallymembers of one family, who live together and whose food and other household expenses aremanaged as one unit; adults — aged 15 or over; housewives — a member of a privatehousehold who is solely or mainly responsible for the household duties.

NEMS Market Research is often commissioned by Key Note to conduct exclusive consumersurveys among a representative sample of adults aged 16 and over in Great Britain.

Number, Profile, Penetration

Tables used in Key Note reports may give figures for the Number, Profile, and/or Penetration.

Contact Centres Understanding Consumer Survey Data


Social Grade

This is normally based on the occupation of the Head of the Household, or if the Head of theHousehold is retired, their former occupation. If this information is not available, social gradeis based on environmental factors such as type of dwelling, amenities in the home, presence ofdomestic help, etc.

The following table broadly defines the six social grades used. The relationship between socialgrade and net income of the Head of the Household is a complex one and readers should notethat income is not determinant of social grade.

Social Grade Social StatusHead of Household’sOccupation

A Upper middle class Higher managerial,administrative or professional

B Middle class Intermediate managerial,administrative or professional

C1 Lower middle class Supervisory or clerical andjunior managerial,administrative or professional

C2 Skilled working class Skilled manual workers

D Working class Semi and unskilled workers

E Those at lowest levels ofsubsistence (no other earner)

State pensioners or widows

Standard Region

This is as defined by the Registrar-General.

Contact Centres Understanding Consumer Survey Data


Key Note Research

Key Note is a leading supplier of market information, publishing an extensive range ofconsumer, industrial, business-to-business and services titles. With over 30 years’ experience,Key Note represents clear, concise, quality market information.

For all reports, Key Note undertakes various types of research:

Online searching is carried out by product code or free search method, and covers the periodfrom the last edition of the report to the current day.

Trade sources, such as trade associations, trade journals and specific company contacts, areinvaluable to the Key Note research process.

Secondary data are provided by Kantar Media (TGI) and Nielsen for consumer/demographicinformation and advertising expenditure, respectively. In addition, various official publicationspublished by National Statistics, etc. are used for essential background data and market trends.

Interviews are undertaken by Key Note for various reports, either face-to-face or by telephone.This provides qualitative data (‘industry comment’) to enhance the statistics in reports;questionnaires may also be used.

Field research is commissioned for various consumer reports and market reviews, and is carriedout by NEMS Market Research.

Key Note estimates are derived from statistical analysis and trade research carried out byexperienced research analysts. Up-to-date figures are inserted where possible, although therewill be some instances where a realistic estimate cannot be made or external sources requestthat we do not update their figures.

Key Note Editorial, 2013

Contact Centres Key Note Research


The Key Note Range of Reports

Key Note publishes over 180 titles each year, across both the Key Note and Market Assessmentproduct ranges. The total range covers consumer, lifestyle, financial services and industrialsectors.

Title Edition Published

Key Note Current Reports

AABC1 Consumer 7 2012

Access Control 12 2011

Accountancy 16 2013

Activity Holidays 5 2012

Advertising Agencies 5 2012

Airlines 23 2013

Airports 16 2013

All-Inclusive Holidays 2 2012

Alternative Healthcare 7 2012

Arts & Media Sponsorship 4 2011

Automatic Vending 25 2011

Automotive Services 8 2012

Autoparts 20 2012

B

B2B Marketing 2 2011

Baby Products 5 2010

Baths & Sanitaryware 15 2011

Betting & Gaming 25 2012

Biscuits & Cakes 19 2012

Book Publishing 22 2012

Book Retailing on the Internet 5 2013

Bookselling 18 2012

Bread & Bakery Products 27 2012

Breakfast Cereals 16 2012

Breweries & the Beer Market 29 2012

Bricks & Tiles 16 2010

Bridalwear 5 2010

Builders’ Merchants 17 2010

Building Contracting 11 2011

Building Materials 14 2011

Bus & Coach Operators 11 2012

Business Postal Services 2 2008

Business Press 15 2012

Business Travel 7 2013


C

C2DE Consumer 7 2013

Canned Foods 18 2011

Care Homes 2 2013

Carpets & Floorcoverings 16 2009

Catering Equipment 15 2012

Catering Market 21 2009

Charity Funding 4 2011

Chemical Industry 15 2013

Childcare 7 2012

Children’s Publishing 4 2012

Childrenswear 9 2011

Chilled Foods 17 2012

China & Earthenware Update 28 2011

Cigarettes & Tobacco 26 2012

Closed-Circuit Television 13 2011

Clothing & Footwear Industry 13 2010

Clothing Manufacturing 16 2011

Clothing Retailing 8 2011

Coffee & Sandwich Shops 7 2012

Commercial Dynamics inFinancial Services 4 2010

Commercial Insurance for SmallBusinesses 4 2012

Commercial Vehicles 16 2011

Computer Hardware 10 2012

Computer Services 10 2012

Computer Software 8 2011

Condiments & Sauces 5 2008

Confectionery 31 2013

Construction Industry 11 2009

Consumer Credit & Debt 7 2012

Consumer Magazines 18 2011

Contact Centres 9 2013

Contraception 5 2011

Contract Catering & FoodserviceManagement 22 2013

Contract Cleaning 23 2013

Cooking & Eating Habits 7 2012

Cooking Sauces & FoodSeasonings 6 2013

Corporate Hospitality 7 2012

Contact Centres The Key Note Range of Reports



Corporate & PromotionalGiftware 4 2011

Cosmetic Surgery 10 2012

Cosmetics & Fragrances 25 2012

Courier & Express Services 18 2013

Cruise Market 3 2012

Customer Magazines 5 2012

Customer RelationshipManagement 4 2008

Customer Services in FinancialOrganisations 5 2010

D

Debt Management (Commercial& Consumer) 7 2013

Defence Equipment 11 2010

Diet Foods 5 2013

Digital Broadcasting 6 2012

Digital Communications 2 2012

Direct Insurance 6 2010

Direct Marketing 20 2012

Direct Mortgages 8 2012

Discount Retailing 8 2011

Disposable Paper Products 13 2009

Distribution Industry 10 2009

DIY & Home ImprovementsIndustry 11 2009

Domestic Heating 14 2009

Drinks Market 19 2009

E

E-Commerce: The InternetGrocery Market 7 2013

E-Commerce: The InternetLeisure & Entertainment Market 5 2008

Electrical Contracting 10 2011

Electrical Wholesale 5 2009

Electricity Industry 8 2012

Electronic Banking 4 2008

Energy Industry 8 2010

Equipment for the Disabled 6 2012

E-Recruitment 4 2012

Estate Agents 18 2011

Estate Agents & Services 6 2012

Ethnic Foods 17 2012

European Long-Term Insurance 4 2008

European Renewable Energy 2 2008

European Short Breaks 2 2008

European Telecommunications 3 2010

European Tourist Attractions 3 2010

European Trends in FoodShoppin 4 2009

Exhibitions & Conferences 13 2013


F

Fast-Food & Home-DeliveryOutlets 26 2012

Film Market 2 2009

Financial Services Marketing toBCs 1 2009

Financial Services Marketing toDEs 2009

Financial Services Marketing toStart-Up Businesses & the Self-Employed 3 2010

Financial Services Marketing tothe Affluent 1 2009

Financial Services Organisationson the Internet 4 2009

Fire Protection Equipment 9 2012

Fish & Fish Products 15 2012

Food Industry 20 2010

Football Clubs & Finance 5 2013

Footwear 17 2012

Forecourt Retailing 9 2012

Franchising 13 2012

Freight Forwarding 18 2011

Frozen Foods 26 2012

Fruit & Vegetables 23 2013

Fruit Juices & Health Drinks 15 2013

Functional Foods 6 2010

Further & Higher Education 8 2013

G

Garden Equipment 14 2012

Gas Industry 7 2012

General Insurance 13 2010

Giftware 20 2011

Glassware 16 2011

Green & Ethical Consumer 5 2012

Greetings Cards 27 2012

Grey Consumer 5 2009

H

Hand Luggage & Leather Goods 16 2012

Health Clubs & Leisure Centres 11 2011

Healthy Eating 6 2008

Holiday Purchasing Patterns 6 2012

Home Entertainment 4 2012

Home Furnishings 20 2011

Home Shopping 15 2013

Horticultural Retailing 17 2008

Hot Beverages 7 2013

Hotels 26 2012

Housebuilding 20 2012




Household Appliances (BrownGoods) 13 2013

Household Appliances (WhiteGoods) 18 2012

Household Detergents &Cleaners 17 2012

Household Furniture 19 2011

I

Ice Creams & Frozen DessertsUpdate 15 2011

Independent Financial Advisers 4 2008

Insurance Companies 12 2009

Insurance Industry 10 2009

Insurance Market 13 2012

Insurance Prospects 2 2008

Internet & Telephone Banking 2 2013

Internet Advertising 8 2013

IT Recruitment 6 2012

IT Security 10 2011

IT Training 14 2012

J

Jewellery & Watches 26 2011

K

Kitchenware 8 2012

L

Laboratory Equipment 11 2013

Leisure in the Home 3 2010

Leisure Outside the Home 3 2010

Lifestyle Magazines 5 2011

Lingerie 11 2013

Local Government Services 3 2010

Low-Fat & Reduced-Sugar Foods 5 2008

M

Marketing in the Digital Age 4 2012

Meat & Meat Products 23 2013

Medical Equipment 18 2012

Medical & Health Insurance 4 2012

Men & Women’s Buying Habits 6 2012

Men’s Toiletries & Fragrances 6 2012

Metal Recycling 7 2013

Milk & Dairy Products 26 2012

Mobile Marketing 1 2009

Mobile Phones 8 2012

Motor Finance 4 2011

Motor Industry 12 2008

Music Industry 2 2010


N

Natural Products 3 2012

Newspapers 19 2012

Non-Food Sales in Supermarkets 6 2013

Non-Metal Recycling 4 2012

Nutraceuticals 3 2008

O

Office Equipment Industry 9 2010

Office Furniture 22 2012

Offshore Oil & Gas Industry 6 2012

Ophthalmic Goods & Services 19 2013

Opticians & Optical Goods 5 2010

Organic Food & Drink 8 2012

OTC Pharmaceuticals 16 2013

Over-50s Consumer 1 2009

Own Brands 14 2012

P

Packaging (Food & Drink) 6 2010

Packaging (Glass) 13 2008

Packaging (Metals & Aerosols) 13 2012

Packaging (Paper & Board) 16 2012

Packaging (Plastics) 16 2012

Pensions 7 2013

Personal Banking 2 2012

Personal Lines Insurance 5 2012

Personal Loans 4 2008

Pet Market 5 2013

Pharmaceuticals Industry 6 2008

Planning for Retirement 1 2008

Plus-Size Fashion 4 2011

Poultry 5 2012

Power Tools 6 2012

Premium Lagers, Beers & Ciders 10 2012

Printing 17 2013

Private Healthcare 23 2013

Protective Clothing & Equipment 8 2012

Public Houses 28 2012

Public Relations Industry 4 2012

Publishing Industry 13 2010

R

Rail Travel 8 2011

Ready Meals 13 2012

Recruitment Agencies(Permanent) 12 2012

Recruitment Agencies(Temporary & Contract) 12 2012

Renewable Energy 5 2012

Restaurants 26 2012

Retail Pharmacies 18 2013




Road Haulage 23 2012

Rural Economy 2 2009

S

Sauces & Spreads 13 2012

Savings & Investments 7 2013

Security Industry 13 2010

Shopfitting 15 2012

Shopping Centres 3 2008

Singles Market 5 2012

Slimming Market 4 2011

Small Businesses & Banks 2 2010

Small Domestic ElectricalAppliances 13 2012

Snack Foods 21 2012

Social Media Marketing 2 2012

Soft Drinks (Carbonated &Concentrated) 19 2012

Soup Market 4 2012

Spirits & Liqueurs 2 2012

Sports Clothing & Footwear 14 2012

Sports Equipment 17 2012

Sports Market 13 2010

Sports Sponsorship 9 2013

Stationery (Personal & Office) 26 2012

Supermarket Own Label 4 2009

Sweet & Salty Snacks 16 2010

T

Take-Home Trade 18 2011

Teenage & Pre-Teen Magazines 5 2012

Teenage Fashionwear 4 2013

Timber & Joinery 20 2011

Toiletries 24 2011

Toys & Games 25 2012

Training 21 2013

Travel & Tourism Market 17 2010

Travel Agents & Overseas TourOperators 24 2012

Trends in Food Shopping 5 2008

Trends in Leisure Activities 5 2012

Tyre Industry 6 2011


U

UK Internet Market 1 2009

Utilities 5 2013

V

Vegetarian Foods 7 2012

Vehicle Breakdown Services 7 2012

Vehicle Security 10 2012

Video Gaming 1 2011

Vitamins, Minerals &Supplements 7 2011

W

Wallcoverings & Ceramic Tiles 19 2012

Waste Management 12 2013

Water Industry 7 2012

Windows & Doors 21 2012

Wine 22 2012

Working Women 5 2009

Key Note Archive Reports

A

Aerospace 12 2003

Agrochemicals & Fertilisers 3 2002

Air Freight 2 2005

Air Transport Logistics 1 2003

Animal Feedstuffs 11 2001

Audio Visual Retailing 1 2000

B

Baby Foods 3 2006

Baths & Showers 1 2000

Bearings 2 2007

Beds, Bedrooms & UpholsteredFurniture 2 2000

Bottled Water 2 2001

C

Cable & Satellite TV 10 2004

Call Centres 6 2006

Cash & Carry Outlets 16 2001

Cinemas & Theatres 9 2001

Clothing Retailers 1 2000

Commercial Radio 8 2004

Consumer Borrowing in Europe 1 2004

Consumer Internet Usage 4 2000

Contracted-Out Services 3 2007

Convenience Retailing 12 2002

Cross-Border Shopping 1 2000

Customer Loyalty in the FinancialServices 1 2000




D

Dark Spirits & Liqueurs 3 2004

Defence Industry 7 2003

Design Consultancies 3 2000

Digital TV 2 2003

DINKY Market 3 2007

Document Imaging Systems 1 2007

Domestic Telecommunications 4 2006

Dry Cleaning & Laundry Services 5 2005

E

Electronic ComponentDistribution 12 2002

Electronic ComponentManufacturing 11 2002

Electronic Games 4 2003

Equipment Leasing 12 2003

E-Shopping 1 2002

European Electricity Industry 3 2007

European Gas Industry 3 2007

European Oil & Gas Industry 2 2007

European Water Industry 3 2007

Extended Financial Families 1 2005

F

Factoring & Invoice Discounting 2 2003

Finance Houses 11 2000

Financial Services Marketing toABC1s 1 2000

Financial Services Marketing toABs 4 2006

Financial Services Marketing toC1C2DEs 1 2004

Financial Services Marketing toOver 60s 1 2004

Financial Services Marketing tothe Retired & Elderly 3 2007

Fitted Kitchens 11 2007

Free-To-Air TV 8 2004


G

Generation Y 1 2007

Global Positioning Systems 1 2002

Global Waste management 2 2070

H

Health Foods 22 2003

Healthcare Market 10 2005

Heating, Ventilating & AirConditioning 9 2002

I

In-Car Entertainment 1 2000

Individual Savings Accounts 2 2005

Industrial Fasteners 8 2001

Industrial Pumps 5 2000

Industrial Valves 8 2001

Internet Service Providers 2 2005

Internet Usage in Business 8 2005

Issues & Challenges in the UK LifeAssurance Market 2 2002

Issues in Higher EducationFunding 2 2006

L

Leisure & Recreation Market 15 2005

Lighting Equipment 14 2002

M

Management Consultants 10 2003

Marketing to Children 4-11 3 2003

Mechanical Handling 9 2001

Millenium Youth 2 2002

Mobile Telecommunications 2 2007

N

New Media Marketing 3 2002

O

Off-Trade Spirits 3 2004

Organic Baby & Toddler Care 1 2007

Over-40s Consumer 2 2005

P

Paper & Board Manufacturers 14 2002

Passenger Travel in the UK 5 2007

Pay TV 2 2004

Pension Extenders 1 2002

Photocopiers & Fax Machines 14 2005

Plant Hire 13 2007

Plastic Cards in Europe 2 2005

Plastics Processing 10 2003

Pre-School Childcare 1 2001

Private-Sector Opportunities inEducation 2 2001




Process Plant Industry 1 2000

Public Transport 1 2001

R

Rail Transport Logistics 1 2003

Railway Industry 2 2006

Recycling & the Environment 1 2000

Retail Credit 2 2000

Retail Development 1 2001

Road Transport Logistics 1 2003

S

Saving Trends in Eurozone 2 2002

Short Break Holidays 4 2001

Short Breaks 2 2004

Slimming Market 8 2000

Small Office Home OfficeConsumer 1 2001

Small Office Home OfficeProducts 1 2001

Sponsorship 2 2000

Supermarket Services 3 2007

Supermarkets & Superstores 20 2003


T

Teenage Magazines 3 2007

Telecommunications 21 2007

Teleworking 2 2003

The Computer Market 11 2004

The Film Industry 4 2002

The Fish Industry 1 2001

The Legal Services Market 1 2005

The Luggage Market 1 2000

The Newspaper Industry 3 2005

Tourist Attractions 5 2001

Tweenagers 1 2001

V

Video & DVD Retail & Hire 8 2005

Videoconferencing 4 2007

W

Water Transport Logistics 1 2003

White Goods 2 2000

White Spirits 1 2005

Women over 45 3 2007


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